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Christine

Автор Элизабет фон Арним

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Дата написания1970-01-01

Язык книгиen

Возрастное ограничение12+

Жанры

зарубежная классика зарубежная старинная литература книги о войне

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Страница 38 из 41

Berlin, Monday, August 3rd, 1914

Darling own mother,

It's only a matter of hours now before Bernd will have to go, and when he goes I'm coming back to you.

Your Chris.

Berlin, Monday August 3rd, evening

Precious mother,

I want to come back to you—directly Bernd has gone I'm coming back to you, and if he doesn't go soon but is used in Berlin at the Staff Head Quarters, as he says now perhaps he may be for a while, I won't stay with the Koseritzes, but go back to Frau Berg's for as long as Bernd is in Berlin, and the day he leaves I start for Switzerland.

I don't know what is happening, but the Koseritzes have suddenly turned different to me. They're making me feel more and more uncomfortable and strange. And there's a gloom about them and the people who have been here today that sets me wondering whether their war plans after all are rolling along quite as smoothly as they thought. I never did quite believe the Koseritzes liked me, any of them, and now I'm sure they don't. Tonight at dinner the Graf's face was a thunder-cloud, and actually the Colonel, who hasn't been all day but came in late for dinner and went again immediately, didn't speak to me once. Hardly looked at me when he bowed, and his bow was the stiffest thing. I can't ask anybody if there is bad news for Germany, for it would be a most dreadful insult even to suggest there could be bad news. Besides, I feel as if I somehow were mixed up in whatever it is. Bernd hasn't been since this morning. I shall go round to Frau Berg tomorrow and ask her if I can have my old room. But oh, little beloved mother, I feel torn in two! I want so dreadfully to get away, to go back to you, and the thought of being at Frau Berg's, just waiting, waiting for the tiny scraps of moments Bernd can come to me, fills me with horror. And yet how can I leave him? I love him so. And once he has gone, shall I ever see him again? If it weren't for him I'd have started for Switzerland yesterday, the moment I heard about Kloster, for the whole reason for my being in Berlin was only Kloster,

And now Kloster says he isn't going to teach me any more. Darling mother, I'm so sorry to have to tell you this, but it's true. He sent round a note this evening saying he regretted he couldn't continue the lessons. Just that. Not another word. I can't make anything out any more. I've got nobody but Bernd to ask, and I only see him in briefest snatches. Of course I knew the lessons would be strange and painful now, but I thought we could manage, Kloster and I, by excluding everything but the bare teaching and learning, to go on and finish what we've begun. He knows how important it is to me. He knows what this journey here has meant to us, to you and me, the difficulty of it, the sacrifice. I'm very unhappy tonight, darling mother, and selfishly crying out to you. I feel almost like leaving Bernd, and starting for Glion tomorrow. And then when I think of him without me—He's as spiritually alone in this welter as I am. I'm the only one he has, the only human being who understands. Today he said, holding me in his arms—you should see how we cling to each other now as if we were drowning—"When this is over, Chris, when I've paid off my bill of duty and settled with them here to the last farthing of me that I've promised them, we'll go away for ever. We'll never come back. We'll never be caught again."

Berlin, Tuesday, August 4th, 1914

My beloved mother,

The atmosphere in this house really is intolerable, and I'm going back to Frau Berg's tomorrow morning. I've settled it with her by telephone, and I can have my old room. However lonely I am in it without my lessons and Kloster, without the reason there was for being there before, I won't have this horrid feeling of being in a place full of sudden and unaccountable hostility. Bernd came this morning, and the Grafin told him I was out, and he went away again. She couldn't have thought I was out, for I always tell her when I'm going, so she wants to separate us. But why? Why? And oh, it means so much to me to see him, it was so cruel to find out by accident that he had been! A woman who was at lunch happened to say she had met him coming out of the front door as she came in.

"What—was Bernd here?" I exclaimed, half getting up on a sort of impulse to run after him and try and catch him in the street.

"Helena thought you had gone out," said the Grafin.

"But you knew I hadn't," I said, turning on Helena.

"Helena knew nothing of the sort," said the Grafin severely. "She said what she believed to be true. I must request you, Christine, not to cast doubts on her word. We Germans do not lie."

And the Graf muttered, "Peinlich, peinlich" and pushed hack his chair and left the room.

"You have spoilt my husband's lunch," said the Grafin sternly.

"I am very sorry," I said; and tried to go on with my own, but couldn't see it because I was blinded by tears.

After this there was nothing for it but Frau Berg. I waited till the Grafin was alone, and then went and told her I thought it better I should go back to the Lutzowstrasse, and would like, if she didn't mind, to go tomorrow. It was very peinlich, as they say; for however much people want to get rid of you they're always angry if you want to go. I said all I could that was grateful, and there was quite a lot I could say by blotting out the last two days from my remembrance. I did, being greatly at sea and perplexed, ask what it was that I had done to offend her; though of course she didn't tell me, and was only still more offended at being asked.

I'm going to pack now, and write a letter to Bernd telling him about it, in case Helena should have a second unfortunate conviction that I'm not at home when he comes next. And I do try to be cheerful, little mother, and keep my soul from getting hurt, and when I'm at Frau Berg's I shall feel more normal again I expect. But one has such fears—oh, more than just fears, terrors—Well, I won't go on writing in this mood. I'll pack.

Your own Chris.

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