German Moonlight.
by Wilhelm Raabe.
A Story by Wilhelm Raabe (1831-1910)
Let me state my case calmly and without any undue fuss. I am, even by German standards, an uncommonly prudent person and I know how to keep my five senses under control. Apart from that, I am a lawyer and father to three sons. Neither during lilac time nor when there are hibiscus, sunflowers and asters on the ground am I in the habit of laying myself open to sentimental and romantic mood-swings. I do not keep a diary, but my legal appointments books are stored in strict chronological order, year by year, on my library shelves.
First of all I have to tell you that, in the year 1867, acting on medical advice, because of the sea air and the salt water, I found myself on the island of Sylt and that, while I was there, I made the acquaintance of someone--a quite extraordinary acquaintance.
It goes without saying that I cannot stop myself by means of an account in writing of my own experiences and feelings from correcting or corroborating things often felt and even more frequently depicted and described in letters or printed matter. The impression made by the lapping of waves, sand dunes and dune gra.s.s, the flight of seagulls and, above all, the west wind on everyone who has had to wash off the dust and sweat of German officialdom is a pleasant and invigorating one. These things did not fail to have the same effect on me either given that the efforts that preceded the said invigoration were no less strenuous.
I lived on the periphery of two villages, Tinnum and Westerland, and therefore had a walk of at least half an hour to cover in order to reach the beach and the health-giving briny. A not much shorter walk led from there to the good fellow who took us every day at noon for a consideration back again. As a German civil servant used to moderation I set no great store by domestic bliss or even luxury. As I had taken with me seven of my twenty-one pipes, I could have set up home for myself in a megalithic tomb and not have felt uncomfortable.
Good. I lived with a baker who heated his oven with jetsam wood, that is to say wood bought at beach auctions that came from the spars and timberwork of ships that had foundered on the sand. I helped him from time to time to split this wood and felt pleasantly stimulated here by the task--at home I devote myself to this ch.o.r.e more for health reasons.
At home I saw and split my firewood in my leisure time, whereas here I did things for fun or carefully perused some papers on the House of Brunswick inheritance that I had brought with me in my suitcase.
During what would have been my business hours I went for walks along the beach.
When you stay in a place like this to take the waters everything takes that much longer. At home I walk every day and in every weather round the purpose-built walls of the town where I carry out my duties as a public servant. On Sylt I had lunch, lay down on a dune for an hour for an afternoon nap and then ran along the beach towards the north of the island, sometimes getting as far as the Red Cliff, but usually only as far as the bathing huts of Wenningstedt.
As the sea like a washerwoman of both s.e.xes cannot keep things to him or herself, but throws everything back, these runs were never without a certain charm. Even though I am by nature a prosaic person, I can nevertheless feel sadness when I turn a dead seal lying on its back over onto its belly and have thoughts about my own mortality as I do so.
Good--or rather on this occasion: even better! I had been on this long, stretched out from south to north and vice versa, island for three weeks approximately when I had the encounter already mentioned at the start of my narrative.
It was getting on towards evening. The sun had gone down and today I was coming back from the Red Cliff, and no less tired for all that since low tide had made the way to the beach accessible for all those patients on Sylt suffering from abdominal problems to the best of its ability. After walking ten steps over quite tight-packed sand, people sank that much deeper into the sand over the next two hundred steps, and the wife, daughter, cousin or sweetheart of my readers who would have graciously picked their way over this path so uncommonly beneficial to health, I should not have hesitated in fact to commend to the attention of a lyric or epic poet if I could have numbered such a one then, with the later exception of Circuit Judge Lohnefinke, among my colleagues and other friends and enemies.
I said that the sun had gone down and I can put it even more succinctly. It was going down just as I reached the dunes south of Wenningstedt, opposite the great chasm. A fishing boat from Hamburg or Cuxhaven followed the sun in disappearing into the sea mist on the horizon and the pleasing and easy on the eye green colour of the water turned to gloomy grey. Even the orange colouring of the sandhill on the left of the sound but tiring path disappeared, and the colour grey got the upper hand to both left and right. The dune gra.s.s started to lisp as the wind got cooler--twilight had fallen and there were cogent reasons for supposing that it would soon be night.
Stumbling and, despite the evening cool, bathed in sweat, I was quickening my gait in the direction of my evening pipe when the unexpected happened and I got to know my colleague Lohnefinke.
Everyone who knows the beach on the west coast of Sylt also knows how steeply the dunes opposite the sandy sanatorium path fall down to the sea, and at one of the places where they were at their steepest my colleague fell out of the sky on top of my head and my journey through life was never the same again so may the estimable reader allow me to continue with my statement of events with my accustomed calm and without exciting myself.
I found myself, as previously stated, opposite the great chasm and the sun had said goodbye five minutes beforehand when, suddenly, at the top of the dune on the left, at approximately seventy feet above my head, a man appeared, running towards the edge of the precipice in a tearing hurry, threw his arms up to heaven, then crouched down and in one fell swoop, to my horror, all the way down the steep, almost vertical sandhill slipped--slid--shot!
Before the cry of total amazement, half of shock, that I then came out with had died away, the man was already sitting at the bottom of the dune in soft sand between a half stove-in barrel that had been washed ash.o.r.e there and a broken ship"s lantern and looking at me, the scurrying pa.s.ser-by, with his mouth wide open, pale-faced with shock and yet managing to twist his lips into a broad grin. He called out, shouted or perhaps it was more of a howl:
"It"s--it"s--behind me! I"m very sorry, sir, I"m sure--but it puts me on edge..."
"Who? What? Who is behind you?" I shouted, staring up at the grey ma.s.s of the sandhill without spying anything in the least bit threatening. Nothing showed itself to me that could justify the boundless consternation and the daring flight of the individual still sitting up in the sand in front of me, a rather portly individual extremely well-dressed.
"Who is behind you? No-one as far as I can see! So tell me! Who"s after you? What prompted you to jump like that? I really can"t see anything at all up there!"
"There is! There is! There"s the moon--Luna--Selene! No, not Luna and Selene, but that moon, that d.a.m.nable German moon! It"s going up behind the mud flats as we speak and will, in a few minutes time, be up there over the dune behind me! And there"s no cover here, no shelter--not even an umbrella--and quarter of an hour to wait for the next omnibus before we can seek refuge. It"ll be the death of me!"
I usually carry an umbrella with me and this day was no exception.
But the stranger in his distraught state had not noticed it and before I offered it to the aforementioned fool, I naturally gave the matter some consideration.
It was clear to me, juridically clear, that I was in the presence of a madman and, quickly composing myself, I thought over how, under such circ.u.mstances, I ought to behave towards him. Should I abandon the man to his fate, unable as I was to change one iota of his idiosyncratic imaginings, and leave it up to his keepers to capture him, or should I strike up a conversation with him and, at the risk of ending up having unpleasant differences of opinion in the process, try to get a better understanding of his situation?
As a human being I should have preferred the former; as a lawyer and a criminologist I opted for the latter. I yielded to temptation and carried on talking to him.
"My dear fellow," I said, "if you believe that being under an umbrella will protect you against your enemy, please make use of mine. Take my arm."
I had already opened up the silk umbrella and the lunatic had jumped up in the air with a joyful shout.
"Heaven, sir, has led me here to you!"
He took hold of my arm and, tipping his hat to me, said:
"Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Lohnefinke, Circuit Judge to the Royal Court of Prussia at Gross-Fauhlenberg in the province of..."
I sprang away from him dumbfounded:
"That isn"t possible!"
"Sir?"
"You? You, who to escape the moon rising just dashed headfirst down that sand dune at the risk of breaking your neck, you are Circuit Judge Lohnefinke? It isn"t possible!"
"But I am he! If you can call it a pleasure, I do have the pleasure of being the person so named."
I mastered myself with difficulty inasmuch as I now had this to say to myself, namely that it was beyond all doubt now that I was in the presence of a madman with more than one fixed idea. The unfortunate wretch does not just see the moon as his enemy, but sees himself as someone else.
"Yes, my name is Lohnefinke and I would consider it an honour if you would now acquaint me with yours."
What could I do? I introduced myself and gave my name and t.i.tle.
The lunatic immediately tipped his hat to me again, grasped my hand, shook it warmly and said:
"Oh, my dear colleague, see how fate brings people together!
Quarter of an hour ago I wouldn"t even have dreamt of it, truly. So we"ve known each other now for a good length of time. Cast your mind back! Did we not in the case of Johann Peter Muller, the self-styled leader of the gypsies from Langensalza, exchange rulings and engage in professional correspondence? You do remember that case, don"t you? Oh, how pleased it makes me!"
Was it a dream or was it reality? Was this man crazy or was it me?
This was indeed how things stood and I could remember quite clearly there and then all my correspondence with the Royal Prussian Court of Justice in Gross-Fauhlenberg. And my singular companion (already we were walking next to each other) did not stop at simply stating these facts, no. He immediately immersed himself in all the finer details of the case in point, setting out verbally all the considerations that he had previously put in writing and I answered him as if there were really no more doubt as far as I was concerned that he really was the Royal Prussian court official he claimed to be and really was called Lohnefinke. The full moon had in the meantime climbed up in the sky to the east of us and was shining directly down on our heads without my companion being in the least concerned about it. Strolling towards the bathing beach of Westerland arm in arm we became more and more absorbed in talking shop and let the moon shine down as much as it liked. We had almost reached the men"s bathing huts and were nearing the steps that lead up from the beach to the top of the dunes when my colleague, who, despite his earlier exaltation had just shown himself to be an extremely clear and perceptive legal mind, all of a sudden, getting stuck in the sand, looked round, looked up and, becoming as pale as a ghost, groaned:
"Ye G.o.ds, we"re back in the middle of it again!"
No doubt about it--we were back in the middle of it again. The fixed idea grabbed hold of the poor man afresh as he hysterically and anxiously pulled my outstretched umbrella down so that it rested on his hat and I could do nothing more for Circuit Judge Lohnefinke than to tighten my grip on his elbow and to speak to the squirming and struggling man in an admonitory tone of voice:
"But my dear sir, please! Compose yourself! Compose yourself!
This crackpot behaviour of yours is too much. How has this harmless source of light actually wronged you? Or what have you done to wrong it? Show some sense and convince yourself of this: this innocent satellite shows no sign whatsoever of falling on our heads."
"My head hurts! My head hurts!" groaned the judge, holding the part of the body in question with both hands.
"Come on now. n.o.body"s chasing you. n.o.body"s after you. Your reaction is quite unnecessary. Don"t take what I say amiss."
"n.o.body? n.o.body?" groaned Lohnefinke.
"n.o.body! I"ll tell you what--let"s go up there. We"ll find people in that restaurant, conviviality, some beverage or other to cheer us up and definitely a paraffin lamp which will put your enemy, male or female, in the shade."