Part 1
Elderflowers
A story by Wilhelm Raabe (1831-1910)
A Recollection of the 'House of Life'
I am a doctor, a general practitioner of long standing and a medical officer of health. Four years ago I was decorated with the Order of the Red Eagle (Third Class) and, having been born some years prior to the turn of the century, am therefore quite near to the end of my biblical lifespan. I used to be married. My children have done well for themselves. My sons are all standing on their own two feet and my daughter has found herself a good husband. I cannot complain of my heart and my nerves as they are robust and have often held out when other people's, not without good reason, would have failed. We doctors become, as it were, both inwardly and outwardly thick-skinned, and, as we become immune to epidemic viruses, so nothing can prevent us from assuming roles as loyal and imperturbable counsellors to unadulterated grief and inarticulate despair. Every man should do his duty and I hope that I always do mine to the best of my ability. Doctors who think that their task is over once they have marked with a cross or some other symbol the name of a dead patient on their list are bad doctors. Very often our hardest task is only just beginning then. We, whose skill and knowledge have been shown to be so powerless, who are so often not seen by the friends and relatives of our patients in the most favourable and equitable of lights, should still do our best to find words of consolation for those relatives and friends. The hours we must spend with and visits we must pay to those left behind after the coffin has been taken out of the house are much more painful than those we passed at the bedside of the hopeless case.
All this has nothing to do, of course, with the observations that follow. I merely want to show, by means of an example, what a wonderful thing the human soul is. Not without good reasons have I entitled these personal memoirs "Elderflowers". The reader will presently appreciate just what an influence Syringa vulgaris has had on me.
It was a clear, cold day in January. The sun was shining and packed snow crackled underfoot as people went past while the wheels of carts made a shrill, squealing sound as they turned. The weather was healthy and invigorating and I filled my lungs once more with a deep breath before ringing, at three o'clock in the afternoon, the doorbell of one of the stateliest mansions in one of the stateliest streets in the town.
I knew what I was doing when I strove to take with me as much human warmth as I possibly could into that elegant home. And yet nobody was lying inside critically ill and there was no corpse there. My scalpel would be superfluous and I would not even need to make out a prescription.
I did not have long to wait at the door. An old servant with a careworn face opened up to me and bowed his head in silent greeting. I walked through the long and cold entrance hall and slowly ascended the wide staircase one step at a time.
I had of late climbed these stairs on numerous occasions, at all hours of the day and night. Upstairs, near a bend in the banister, stood a fine plaster cast of a pensive muse who, gracefully enshrouded by her veils, had been given the attitude of leaning her chin on her hand. When the great city slept, when the light of the lamp, which the old servant carried in front of me, deep into the night, came to rest on that pure, white shape, I gazed upon it steadily in passing and tried to take with me something of the bust's lovely and eternal tranquillity behind that fateful door where... but that was all over with now, the fever had won and the coffin with the young virgin's head cradled on a white satin headrest, had been taken downstairs past this selfsame statue. The coffin had then been taken through the hallway and outside through the streets of the town. Three weeks had gone by--time enough for the grave to be covered with snow and for the cold winter sun to now be shining on it.
I walked on through well-ordered rooms where beautiful pictures were hanging on the walls and flowers were arranged in window-boxes and the floor was overlaid by soft carpets. But every room I entered I found cold and uninhabitable.
Door after door I opened and closed gently till I found myself standing in front of the last one leading to the last remaining room in that part of the house, a corner bedroom already well-known to me. I stood outside the door to listen for a moment as somebody inside the bedroom moved about.
I knew what I was going to find in that bedroom, but I felt, nevertheless, a cold, clammy sweat breaking out on my forehead and all the nerve-endings on my skin ever so slightly beginning to tingle. Even the most case-hardened doctor is never quite hardened enough and today I was to learn the truth of that all over again.
It was a warm and cheerful, comfortable room into which I now entered. Here too sunlight inundated everything, reflected by the room's big mirrors. And here too, on the window-sill, pretty flowers were in evidence, and somewhere, in amongst them, a finely wrought birdcage with two songbirds in it. Over here was a piano with the lid up and, in front of it, a piano-stool the seat of which had been embroidered. A songbook lay open on the music holder. Everything in that room pointed to the fact that a woman and, moreover, a young woman, lived there or rather had lived there. Everything bore the hallmark of a single young lady's delicacy; a married woman or an old maid would not have had the same taste in interior design. The pale-looking woman, dressed in black, whom I greeted wordlessly and who, kneeling on the carpet in front of an open drawer, looked up at me with eyes terribly sad, drained absolutely dry of tears, came here every day to drink in every minute of this fading brilliance and fragrance: the fragrance and the brilliance, alas, of what had been and never would be more.
After exchanging greetings, we spoke but little. The bereaved mother addressed me as usual with the words: "Thank you for coming, dear friend!" and then I sat down on the embroidered stool in front of the piano, resting my head in my hand, watching this woman as she stooped to do things.
She was busy ordering the little treasures that her daughter had left behind her after her brief stay on earth. Each day she would imbibe another bitter draught from that chalice of memory which all those who have lost a loved one clutch at so tightly.
Now it was up to her to sort out letters from school friends, old birthday presents, items of personal jewellery and a hundred and one other curiosities of a manifold and colourful multiplicity which art and craft, full of hidden meanings, bestow on their favourites in this world. Everything that came to hand was treated by this poor woman as a sentient, living thing. She lingered over it, talked to it and called it to mind, remembering just when it had first come into the house to give pleasure to or perhaps, in some cases, to slightly unsettle the woman's now dead daughter. Here, for instance, was a smashed shepherdess in porcelain and thereby hung a tale and this proud mother told it to herself, to me and to the multi-coloured gilded ornament with all its twists and turns, exactly as it had happened. Then, as my hands wandered absent-mindedly over the piano keys behind me, a look of jealousy flashed across the face of that much-to-be-pitied narrator: would the hand of a stranger dare to play again those notes that had once belonged to the deceased?
As the woman once more cast her livid face downwards, my glance chanced to fall on the songbook lying open on the music-holder. The song contained therein was a sad one. Was it just a coincidence that the songbook lay open at that particular place or had the dead girl, somewhat ominously, turned to it herself? It read as follows:
Should fate bestow on you a precious gift, Needs must you lose some other dear advantage; Pain, like success, is gathered bit by bit, And what you long for most will do most damage.
A human hand is like a childish hand That grabs at life, then wantonly destroys it. It ruins what it cannot understand And clings to something though it ne'er enjoys it.
A human hand is like a childish hand, Man's heart a childish heart, full of childish fears. Never lose your grip! ... Life's a burning brand And laughter, soon or late, for aye changed to tears.
Should fate bestow on you a garland wreath, You needs must pluck away its finest flower; You to yourself destruction will bequeath And over scattered petals cry and cower.
With this song came the first reminder of a bygone age to which, however, a further reminder would need to be added before the series of thoughts and impressions recorded in these pages finally developed.
The sky outside was cold and blue over the roofs opposite. The sun was still shining through the high casement windows, but the ice crystal patterns thereon, which had melted slightly in the heat of the noonday sun, were already re-forming. I had picked up from a sewing table an ornamental ballroom spray of artificial flowers and the sun also shone on this bouquet.
It was an artful and delicate concoction of white and blue elderflowers and leaves and a single strand of long blonde hair had got mixed up in it when the girl who was now dead had taken it out of her hair after the ball held the night before her fatal fever started.
There are many kinds of laurel wreaths in the world and just as many ways of running after them to win them or to lose them. Is not every life an attempt to weave a garland by and for oneself? We all set about the work to the best of our strength and ability and are all more or less successful in completing it. Often very fine work is produced, but then again hopelessly botched jobs as well come to light. Many a wreath is destroyed before completion and many a proud garland, having adorned the head of some elevated personage, eventually falls into the hands of a total stranger who, while holding it, examines it and tears it apart leaf by leaf as an austere winter sun, ill-disposed to all borrowed plumes and tinsel, looks on impassively.
The decorative spray I was holding in my hand just then was not, of course, destined to suffer that fate. It consisted for the most part of elder blossoms and, though it was only an artificial, trumped-up thing, its heart-warming vivacity was such that, old as I was, with white hairs on my head that had not sprung up there overnight, I was plunged into the contemplation of increasingly remote and wild blue yonders. Memories awoke in me which had, at bottom, little to do with the deceased youngster's ballroom favour.
Blame those elder blossoms for the deep and bitter seriousness with which I now thought of the wreath that had twisted itself around my own life, in part due to the efforts of my own hands, and the two ends of which would soon now make contact with each other.
The song lying open on top of the piano had been written more for me than for the young dead girl who had now, after a short and happy sojourn on earth, fallen softly, painlessly and quietly asleep, having worn this little wreath of fair spring flowers on an even fairer head as a lovely symbol of her life and her success in plaiting garlands.
I had been flung out into the world to fend for myself quite early on in life and had lived as an orphan, heir to a not inconsiderable fortune, in the house of a relative who was also a bilious hypochondriac carrying morbid thoughts of death even into the most cheerful of days and binding me with iron fetters to my daily chores and then to unremitting study. Discontented and recalcitrant, I would sit in a darkened room and my childhood, which contains the happiest days of your life under normal circumstances, passed by wretchedly and inauspiciously enough under the watchful gaze of those surly eyes. The unbridled pleasure and the heady exaltation to be found in a circle of carefree companions were unknown to me then. I never once got a thrashing for a silly puerile prank, and that an incalculable blessing was denied me in this way, which no grammatical treat could ever take the place of, is something that more than one well-educated gentleman can testify to.
There was much that was fascinating and exotic in many of the books over which I had to pore all day long, but even the most splendid and dazzling of gods and goddesses came over to me as no better than grisly torturers, and ancient heroes and philosophers appeared to me to fight their battles and impart their wisdom only as a way for them to vent on me their arbitrary spleen, poor prisoner that I was. They had lived their lives and carried out their exploits only to drag me, thousands of years later, through terrifying labyrinths full of monstrous vocabulary and to push me over gloomy precipices bristling with the brambles of complex grammatical constructions.
When this seven-year apprenticeship to misery had finally finished, I naturally broke loose like a wild animal from its chain and the first and hitherto imponderable consequences of such an upbringing came to the fore. I belonged at university to the wildest and the most anarchic of its confraternities and my standing in the eyes of my dignified tutors was appreciably less than it was in the eyes of my distinctly undignified cronies.
I naturally got as far away as possible from the area in which my guardian and relative lived and embarked on my academic career in Vienna, which was still, in those days, Mozart's Vienna of 'wine, women and song'. And when the ground beneath my feet had grown too hot for me there, and too many eyes were taking too much notice of what I was doing, I went to Prague, a city world-famous for its Schools of Medicine.
The sun was dancing still over the ballroom favour in my hand and the solitary hair, which its beautiful wearer had left behind between the white and now reddish blossoms, glowed like a thread of spun gold. I remembered the old city of Prague with its one hundred towers and another fair maiden whose hair though had been black and I remembered other elderflowers. Prague! A town of lunacy and gaiety! A town of martyrs and musicians and beautiful women! Prague! How much of my freedom-loving soul you have taken away from me!
They say that when a Czech mother has given birth to a child, she lays it on the roof: if it stays there it is destined to become a thief, if it rolls off it is destined to be a musician. If the foregoing aphorism had come out of a German head, Bohemians would probably have had a lot to say about it, but, as it is a pan-Slavic dictum, we must take it as it is, at face value. In the old and fabulous city of Prague, when I was studying medicine there, such a child existed, the offspring of a Bohemian mother who was also Jewish. It had failed to fall off the roof, having indeed anchored itself thereto, and was therefore fated to become a thief. It stole my heart and yet I did not love it and the story that grew out of all this was a sad one.
Then it was, if anything, even more difficult than today to find Prague's famous Jewish cemetery if you were a stranger in the town. One simply did, and still does, the best one can to find the place, and so I too, the day after my first arrival in Prague, asked the way there, having just, coming from the Grosser Ring, gone down Ghost Lane, at which point I had got lost in the nameless confusion of little streets and alleyways that together surround 'the good place'.
As it is a matter of principle with me to turn to the most pleasant face I can find in any quandary caused by unfamiliar surroundings to help me, this was what I did now, but I fell from one difficulty straight into another: the people I met were all, without exception, as ugly as sin. Had I been willing to turn to the most repulsive face among them, I might have succeeded in arriving at my destination sooner. Eventually, however, I saw what I was looking for.
On a washing line strung up in front of a shadowy doorway hung an old frock and a not-ungracious fifteen-year-old girl was nonchalantly leaning against the door-jamb. She kept her hands and her arms hidden behind her back and looked at me. I looked back at her and decided to put my question. Hers was not the kind of face well-to-do people have and, before I received a response, a small brown hand came out from behind the child's back and was thrust towards me with unmistakable intent and there was nothing left for me to do but to deposit there a six-kreuzer piece.
"Our old graveyard, you say. Why, I'll take you there myself, sir."
Her wiry form sprang forthwith down three dirty steps, sailed past me without even turning round and started to lead me in a veritable zigzag through the most abominable nooks and crannies, back streets and alleyways in which offers came from all directions with a view to purchasing my old black German velvet frock-coat. I did not even stop to turn these offers down but concentrated all my attention on the dainty jack o'lantern who was acting as my guide in these uncanny regions and who, playfully enjoying my discomfiture as she did so, was leading me astray.
We came at last into a narrow dead-end and turned off to the right between two high stone walls at the end of which a curious round arched door led to an equally curious dark passageway. My light footed guide came to a halt outside this entrance, pointed to the darkness that prevailed there and said with an apparent candour that really took the biscuit: "Just knock on that door down there."
Although I did not have the slightest inkling of where it was I ought to knock, I groped my way along the passage more by good luck than good management, till I finally stumbled on a darkened door. I knocked on it, hearing moans and groans and then a shuffling sound coming from inside. Then the door opened and I stood there rooted to the spot in terror by an unsavoury old witch screeching at me in Czech. Three more of these sorceresses were creeping up on me on crutches and they too were snarling something unintelligible at me. Totally taken aback I gazed about me in the semi-darkness of the long low room. There were six beds there and, in two of them, two terrible spectres were sitting up and staring at me like the unfortunate creatures that Gulliver encountered on his travels, those beings who were born with a black spot on their forehead and who were incapable of dying. I had the temerity to repeat my question about the Jewish cemetery even though my own misgivings warned me I had let myself be led here by the nose and that the question itself was quite inadmissible under the circumstances. I found myself, a moment later, back again in the sinister dark passage already depicted, happy to have gained my freedom without having had my eyes scratched out. Inside the room there was pandemonium. The urchin, my will-of-the-wisp, my precious Jewish sweetheart, had led me for my half-a-dozen kreuzers to a charitable hospice for six old Christian ladies instead of to the venerable Israelite to whom the key to Beth Chaim had been entrusted.
A sound of high-pitched laughter roused me from my vexed and disconcerted state. Outside in the alleyway the sun was shining and, in the sunshine at the end of the dark passage, another witch was dancing and "dere iss no creadure vairer dan a vitch van she is younk beink."
She danced in the sunshine and pulled a long face at me and I shook my fist at her threateningly: "Just you wait, you witch, you temptress, you little female devil from Prague, you!"
She, however, pointed with her finger at her mouth and called out mockingly: "Strc prst skrz krk!" These lilting syllables, noticeable for the richness of their consonant clusters, roughly translated mean something like: "Go and stick your finger down your throat!" Then the goblin disappeared and I was free to reflect on the underlying meaning of her words to my heart's content, but I chose not to and, after such an untoward experience, I decided not to ask anyone else the way to the old Jewish cemetery, but began, with Germanic thoroughness, to look for it myself. I trusted to my own lights and they did not leave me in the lurch, but brought me, in the end, by way of the dirtiest labyrinth of buildings that the human mind can imagine, to the gate that led to that awesome, oft-described domain of a thousand years of dust.
I saw there the countless tombstones piled up on top of one another and the ancient elder trees that twist and spread their gnarled old branches round and over them. I wandered down the narrow graveyard paths and saw the jugs of Levi and the hands of Cohen and the grapes of Canaan. As a mark of respect I laid, like everyone else, a small stone on the grave of the Chief Rabbi, Judah Loew ben Bezalel. Then I sat down on a grimy gravestone dating from the fourteenth century and the uncanny nature of the place impressed itself upon me with considerable force.
For a thousand years the dead of God's chosen people had been gathered here together, hemmed in in the same way that the living had been by the narrow walls of the ghetto. The sun shone brightly and it was spring and, from time to time, a cool gust of wind stirred the branches and the blossoms of the elder trees so that they brushed against the graves and filled the air with a sweet fragrance. I, on the other hand, was finding it more and more difficult to breathe. Was this really the place they called Beth Chaim, the House of Life?
From that black, damp, mouldy earth which had swallowed whole so many sorely-tried, ill-treated, put-upon and harassed generations of living beings and into which life after life had sunk as into a bottomless, all-consuming swamp--from that mildewed ground, I say, rose a pungent aroma of decomposition more suffocating than the stench that emanates from the unburied carcass of a beached whale, sufficiently funereal as an odour to cancel out completely all the sunlight and the pleasant scents exuded by both flowers and spring breezes.
I have already mentioned that I was, at that time in my life, something of a hell-raiser. The feeling, however, I was gripped by at that moment was adequate proof, even to me, of a latent, as yet underlying seriousness in my character.
My head was lolling further and further down on my chest when, suddenly, right next to me, on top of me, I heard the sound of childish, high-pitched laughter already familiar to me from my having heard it once before. This time I was startled and, looking up quickly, caught a fleeting glimpse of a delightful female form.
In the foliage of one of the low elder-bushes which, as has already been pointed out, covered the whole of the graveyard, in amongst the flowers themselves, on one of those fantastically gnarled branches which the spring, in its splendour and its glory, had crowned so abundantly with greenery and blossoms, sat the practical joker who had made such a bad job of showing me the way here, smiling roguishly down at her adopted German student.