Castle Gripsholm Page 14

  Slowly, very slowly and haltingly the child began to talk – we didn’t force her to and at first she didn’t want to at all, but gradually her tongue loosened. We saw how much she wanted to talk, how much she had to say, and she said it all:

  The row over Lisa Wedigen; the leaf from the calendar; the constant punishments and the harebells under the pillow; her nickname ‘the child’; little Will and Mummy; and all the things the Limb of Satan devised to tyrannise the little girls, and Hanne and Gertie and the food in the cupboard and everything.

  It was a bit confused, and, although we understood the gist of it, from then on I called the little thing Ada Confusion. The Princess mothered and fathered the child at the same time. I suggested she should breastfeed the infant, and then there was a fierce quarrel as to which breast: left or right. And so we reached Stockholm.

  We were on our way back to Germany.

  Berlin stretched out its giant arms across the sea . . .

  ‘We’d better phone Frau Kremser,’ said the Princess, ‘just to be on the safe side. Boy, have we had a good holiday! And what do you want?’ The girl had been fidgeting as if she had something to say, but then said nothing. ‘Well?’

  No, she didn’t need the potty. She wanted to ask us something. Which she did.

  ‘Are you actually tramps?’

  We looked at her, completely flabbergasted.

  ‘Well, Frau Adriani said . . .’ It turned out that Frau Adriani had represented us to the child as committed, yes, as professional tramps – ‘those tramps out there, that aren’t even married!’ – and the child, by now completely thawed out, wanted to know; were we tramps, and where we’d tramped . . . and if we’d been married before, and why not any more, and then she did have to go to the potty, and then we put her to bed. I caught myself feeling a little jealous of the child. Who was the child around here? I was. But she fell asleep, and Lydia was once again all mine.

  ‘Are you married?’ asked the Princess. ‘What a question!’

  ‘Oh, woman,’ I said. ‘We’re tramps, we can’t be married. And if we were . . . Five weeks, that would be fine, Mhm? Without a cloud. No rows, no problems, no histoires. Five weeks aren’t five years. Where are our troubles?’

  ‘We handed them in at the left-luggage office . . . you can do that,’ said the Princess.

  ‘For five weeks, yes,’ I said. ‘For five weeks, some things are fine, everything’s fine.’ Yes . . . intimate, but not bored; new, but not too new; fresh, but not too strange. Life went on, seemingly unchanged . . . The heat of the first few days was gone, and the long, lukewarm years were not upon us yet. Are we frightened of emotion? Sometimes of the form it takes. Anyone can manage to be happy for a brief time. A brief happiness: none other is conceivable, here on earth.

  We rolled into Trälleborg. It was late in the evening; the white arc-lights swayed in the wind and we watched as the carriage was pushed onto the ferry. The child slept.

  A large passenger-steamer swept through the water in the harbour. All its lights sparkled: the ship’s lanterns at the front, little dots on top of the masts; every room, every cabin, was lit up. There it went. Music drifted across.

  Whatever you do –

  my heart will still belong to you –

  A wave of yearning swept our hearts. There went the illuminated happiness of others. And we knew that if we were sitting on that liner and saw our own illuminated train on the ferry, then we too would think, there goes happiness. Glittering and colourful, the great ship steamed past us, with the little dots of light on its masts. We didn’t see the sweating stewards, nor the ship-owners in their offices, nor the quarrelsome captain and the dyspeptic purser . . . of course, we knew they existed – but right now, for this one moment, we wanted to forget.

  Whatever you do –

  my heart will still belong to you –

  For a little while, our hearts sailed with them. Then our carriage was on the ferry. The ship trembled slightly. The lights on the coast grew smaller and smaller, then sank back into the blue night air.

  We stood on deck. The Princess drew in the salt breath of the sea.

  ‘Poppa, thank you for a lovely summer!’

  ‘Oh no, girl, thank you!’

  She looked across the dark sea. ‘The sea . . .’ she said quietly, ‘the sea . . .’ Behind us was Sweden. Sweden and a summer.

  Later, we sat in a corner of the restaurant and ate and drank.

  ‘To our holiday, girl!’

  ‘And to what else?’

  ‘To Karlchen!’

  ‘Cheers!’

  ‘To Billie!’

  ‘Cheers!’

  ‘To Adriani!’

  ‘Boo!’

  ‘To your Generalkonsul!’

  ‘Half a cheer!’

  ‘None of those are proper toasts, Poppa. Don’t you know another one? You do know another one. Well?’

  I knew what she was getting at.

  ‘Martje Flor,’ I said. ‘Martje Flor!’

  She was that Friesian peasant’s daughter, during the Thirty Years’ War, whom mercenaries dragged to the table; they had plundered everything, the wine-cellar and the smokehouse, the fruit-store and the linen-cupboard, and the peasant himself was standing by, wringing his hands. Roughly they had dragged the girl over – and there she stood, stubborn and not at all frightened. They wanted her to propose a toast! They flung a bottle at the peasant’s face, and pressed a full glass into her hand.

  Then Martje Flor raised her voice and her glass. There was silence in the room when she spoke her words, words which all Lower Germans know:

  ‘Here’s to long life and happiness!’ she said.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Biographical Notes

  Title Page

  Copyright and More Information

  Introduction

  Castle Gripsholm Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Landmarks

  Cover

  Start Here