He was a handsome young man with girlish pink cheeks and bright-blue eyes and a short moustache. He liked to tell ‘jokes for gentlemen’ and amused Herr Perlefter away in a corner.
Enquiries were made into his past life, and it was learned that he had a mistress.
Herr Perlefter had nothing against a mistress, whom one could easily discard. Furthermore, he was sympathetic to the idea of a dentist in the family. How often did one or another family member have a toothache? The dentistry bills always accumulated at the end of the year.
In general Herr Perlefter was in favour of a practical son-in-law, as I have mentioned once before. Everything that was a danger, a pain or an evil should be immediately averted. He longed for a solicitor for his youngest daughter. By surrounding himself and his family with a protective force of experts he believed that he could not only protect his family but also save money.
Unfortunately, Julie’s health did not hold up as had been predicted six months earlier. She had an abscess, a hateful and downright proletarian illness and, moreover, on a place on her body about which one could not speak easily, a location one could divine based on the silence it inspired.
Consequently, Julie could not lie on her back, and thus the bed no longer gave her any comfort. She was operated upon twice. The family doctor came twice a day, and the surgeon came three times a week. When her bandages were removed Julie was emaciated, and as it was not yet summertime it was decided to seek a health resort for her.
Herr Perlefter, whose digestion was not very good, would enter a spa for stomach ailments. He had to drink water and exercise. In contrast, his wife needed complete tranquillity, for she was nervous.
Karoline and her chemist sought a serene place, such a location in which one could experience the most idyllic existence. Fredy was to go with the Kofritz family on a little trip through Europe and then stay in Switzerland where there were mountains for tourists and valleys for automobile tours.
The youngest daughter, Margarete, was to accompany her mother, although it would be very boring. Frau Perlefter could not travel alone. She knew nothing of the outside world. She did not understand train schedules, she was shy and even fearful, and it was impossible for her to sleep alone in a hotel room.
Thus remained Julie, who did not want to go with her mother since Margarete would be there. The abscess had interrupted the handsome dentist’s courtship, and he had to be given the opportunity to continue in a summer resort. That could spell trouble for Margarete, since she was more beautiful and healthier. It was predicted that even in a health resort Julie would seek a bed. In that case, the invited dentist would accompany Margarete, and one knew that the walk around the health resort was lonely and in the evenings so poorly lit that she might be seduced into imprudent activities.
There were therefore many difficult problems to resolve within the Perlefter household, and they even asked my advice, although I was a novice in such matters. None the less I suggested that the dentist only be invited when Julie had fully recovered her health. He was invited for a week, and in the meantime Margarete was sent to be with her father at the spa.
In mid-July the Perlefter family was scattered in various recreation spots, and I often went to visit them by train, bearing bunches of flowers.
I was asked to take a peek at the Perlefter house from time to time. I promised I would do so. I was told that the silver utensils were stored in the wood-burning stove in the salon.
The alpaca cups stood in the linen closet. On the floor lay the rug, rolled up. The lamps were covered with large white sacks. The windows were bare as in sick rooms; the curtains lay in the laundry room. It smelled of camphor to combat moths, and every evening the cook played the gramophone.
That summer I went to live with Henriette in the village, and I was pleased to see how capable she was. Her husband feared her. She slapped the servants, and she boxed the maids. All was tidy on this farm. The watchdog loved Henriette and stayed at her feet. Sometimes she slaughtered the chickens herself — with a sharp knife she struck a confident blow — and then I got a good soup. She didn’t let me get up before eight in the morning, and after sundown she told me that the farmer had at most a year to live.
Henriette was still pretty, at any rate it seemed that way to me, and I confess that I was not certain whether she also appeared so pretty to others. Back then I wanted to become a farmer, who sowed, ploughed and harvested and never wrote a word.
When I returned to the city there was a letter waiting for me. Fredy had married en route; the celebration would be held later. Karoline had also married the chemist. The dentist was on the verge of becoming engaged to Julie. Frau Perlefter had no more headaches. Herr Perlefter’s digestion was in perfect order. Margarete danced diligently and yet gained weight. Overall the weather was beautiful. It hardly rained that summer. Such a dry summer is apt to put the wealthy into a good mood.
VII
A half a year later — it was winter, the time of year for balls and dressmakers — Margarete got engaged to a gentleman in the prime of his life, a man who made table lamps. His lamps were of a very special type, made from a material that looked like porcelain and yet never broke, decorated with colourful ornamentation which could never fade, with movable shades whose position could be adjusted. The most important thing about these lamps, however, was the fact that the inside contained one or more little bulbs, so that a faint, mild, milky light streamed out, the room darkened and yet illuminated, the most excellent lighting for people who suffer from insomnia, who fear the dark or who are disturbed by an ordinary lamp. A light that was also useful in salons in which intimate societies sat, for lovers who no longer need to see each other but do not want complete darkness and for ageing and ill-looking women whose fading looks are still beautiful if a dim and colourful shadow is cast upon them.
One should never draw conclusions about a person’s character based on his profession. In this case, however, I cannot deny a correlation between the gentle light of the table lamps and the lyrical soul of Herr Sedan, as Margarete’s fiancé was called. The historical name had no bearing in this case. When one saw Herr Sedan one thought not of history. He looked fat and mild, and he possessed the gentle softness and warm goodness of a man whose soul was well cushioned and protected against any attack like a well-padded suitcase. Across the wide bridge of his nose sat his ancient black pince-nez with thick, sharply polished glasses that slightly shrunk his large eyeballs without robbing them of their lustre of goodness. Herr Sedan wore dark suits that made him look slim, obscured his belly and mellowed the girlish red of his cheeks. He was someone who wrote no poetry, yet one could still say that he was poetic, so I call him a poet, a passive poet. And even this restrictive attribution loosens when I consider that the lamps of the Sedan factory were actually poetry.
One must remember that Margarete’s goal was to operate a salon in which true artists could convene. Consequently, her fiancé began to finance an artistic magazine. He located a man of letters, a writer of feuilletons who had long been seeking funding. His name was Dr Feld, and he wrote under an Italian pseudonym about fashion, art exhibitions, social events and also about women. This last them e he handled in the form of aphorisms that he scattered in various magazines, as a farmer spreads seeds over the fields. One read the aphorisms there where the sketches left off and the advertisements began, brief lines punctuated with dashes on smooth shiny paper in a delicate font, and the reader sensed immediately a man of mind and world. Herr Dr Feld now brought a new magazine into existence. It was richly endowed and appeared irregularly, not because it lacked money but, rather, because its publisher and creator considered irregularity a quintessential characteristic of refinement.