The brother’s visit to the castle had been a whim, and he regretted it during the very first week that he spent there. Nevertheless, he remained and said nothing about leaving, even though the Baron would not have minded it in the least. But now his brother had seen the Lady Agnes and was pursuing her.
It was not long before the maid of the beautiful Lady Agnes brought her a new dress, which the visitor at the castle had sent as a present. It was not long before the maid was taking letters and flowers from the visitor’s servant, near the wall of the park. And after only a few days had passed, the visitor met Lady Agnes in a forest hut at noon on a summer’s day and kissed her hand and her small mouth and her white neck. When she went into the village, however, and he encountered her there, he would take off his riding cap and salute her. In turn, she curtsied to him like a girl of seventeen.
One evening shortly thereafter, when the visitor was alone by the river, he saw a boat sail across the water carrying a rower and a luminous woman. What the curious man could not discern for certain in the dusk became clearer after a few days, and then he knew more than he wanted to know. The woman whom he had held passionately in his arms at noon in the forest hut and whom he had ignited with his kisses, was the same woman who sailed in the evening with his brother over the dark Rhine and disappeared with him behind the shore of reeds.
The visitor became gloomy and had awful dreams. He had not pursued and made love to Lady Agnes as if he were hunting a luscious piece of game; rather he had treated her like a precious discovery. With each kiss he had been surprised and overjoyed that so much tender innocence had succumbed to his wooing. That is why he had given her more than other women. She brought back his youth, and he embraced Lady Agnes with gratitude, consideration, and tenderness — the very same woman who went down dark paths with his brother at night. Now he bit into his beard, and his eyes were inflamed with anger.
Untouched by all that was happening and by the invisible tension mounting at the castle, the poet Floribert continued to spend his days in peace and calm. He was not pleased when the visitor teased and pestered him, although he was accustomed to such behavior from previous visits. So he avoided the Baron’s brother, spent entire days in the village or with the fishermen on the banks of the Rhine, and indulged himself with rambling fantasies in the fragrant warm evenings.
One morning Floribert noticed that the first tea roses were beginning to blossom along the wall of the castle. During the last three summers he had placed the first blossoms of these rare roses on the threshold of Lady Agnes’s house, and he was now happy that he would be able to bring her this modest and anonymous greeting for the fourth time.
At noon on this same day the Baron’s brother met with the beautiful lady in the birch woods. He did not ask her where she spent her evenings. He looked into her calm innocent eyes with a surprising glare that was almost cruel, and before he went away, he said, “I’m going to come to you this evening when it’s dark. Leave a window open!”
“Not tonight,” she said softly. “Not tonight.”
“But I want to.”
“Another time, all right? Not tonight. I can’t.”
“I’m coming tonight — tonight or never again. Do what you want.”
She freed herself from his embrace and left him.
In the evening the visitor lay in wait by the river until it became dark. But no boat came. Then he went to the house of his beloved, hid in the bushes, and held his rifle over his knee.
It was quiet and warm. The jasmines smelled sweetly. The sky filled itself with small faint stars behind little white sweeping clouds. A bird sang deep in the park, a solitary bird.
When it was almost completely dark, a man came treading softly around the corner of the house, almost creeping. His hat was pulled down over his forehead, although it was so dark that he really had no need of it. In his right hand he was carrying a bouquet of white roses that had a faint glow to them. The visitor, lying in wait, eyed him sharply and cocked the trigger of his rifle.
The man who had just arrived looked up at the house and saw that there were no lights burning. Then he went to the door, bent over, and kissed the iron handle of the lock.
Right at that moment there was a blaze, a crack, and then a weak echo inside the park. The man who had been carrying the roses fell to his knees, tumbled over backward onto the pebbles, and lay there quivering.
The marksman waited in his hiding place for a good while, but nobody came, and inside the house everything remained quiet. Then he moved cautiously to the door and bent over the man whom he had shot. The hat had fallen off his head, and the Baron’s brother was astonished and upset to find the poet Floribert.
“Him, too!” he groaned and left.
The tea roses lay scattered on the ground, one of them soaked in the blood of the dead man. In the village the clock struck the hour. The sky covered itself more densely with white clouds, and against this background the enormous castle tower stretched like a standing giant that had just awakened from a sleep. The water of the Rhine sang softly in slow currents, and in the interior of the dark park the solitary bird sang and kept singing until after midnight.
A Man by the Name of Ziegler
(1908)
There was once a young man by the name of Ziegler who lived on Brauer Street. He was one of those young men whom we meet every day time and again, but we never really notice his face because it resembles everyone else’s, like a collective face.
Ziegler did everything that such people always do and was just like them. He was not untalented, but also not talented. He loved money and entertainment, liked to wear nice clothes, and was just as cowardly as most people. His life and actions were determined less by impulses and aspirations than by prohibitions and the fear of punishment. At the same time he had many honorable qualities and was in general, all things considered, a delightfully normal man who thought of himself as very nice and important. Indeed, he regarded himself, just as every person tends to do, as a unique individual, while he was really typical. He believed that his life and destiny were at the center of the world’s attention, just as everyone does. He had very few doubts, and when the facts contradicted his views on life, he shut his eyes in disapproval.
As a modern man, Ziegler had an infinite respect not only for money but also for that other powerful force — science. Yet he would not have been able to say what science actually was. When he thought of science, he meant something like statistics and a little bacteriology. He knew very well how much money and honor the government gave to science. In particular he respected cancer research, for his father had died from cancer, and Ziegler assumed that this science, which had made great progress in the meantime, would not allow the same thing to happen to him.
In his appearance, Ziegler tried to distinguish himself by dressing somewhat beyond his means, and he always kept up with the particular fashion of the year. On the other hand, he looked down upon the trends of the month or season, for it would have taxed his pocket too much to keep up with them, and thus he regarded them as foolish affectations. He had great esteem for integrity and did not shy from cursing his supervisors or governments — but only among friends and in places where he felt secure. Actually, I am probably spending too much time on this description. Ziegler was truly a charming young man, and his loss is our loss. Indeed, his end came early and in a strange way that undermined all his plans and justifiable hopes for the future.