The question bored into my brain so abruptly that I nearly fell off my chair and I had to collect my thoughts for a minute before I could answer yes.
"Good! Then we have talked of this theme at its true worth and no further talk is called for. Is it responsible for that alliteration as well? Look, there it is, looking in at the window--the clouds that you put me off with earlier have also been incapable of hiding it. The meadows are lit up for miles--such beauty! How wonderful! My dear colleague, how truly charming the world is, how splendid both in war and peacetime! Poetry drips down from above and springs up from below! Listen--listen to the music of the everlasting sea! The waves dance their immortal dance in the German moonlight--why should we not dance too? My soul is a drop in the harmonious flow of the world, a shining, light-filled drop. Colleague, let us partake of the sweetness of nature. It"s a sin to sit here in this dull room while the elements of earth and water outside are looking so extraordinarily fine in the German moonlight. Come on. Drink up.
Let"s go..."
"You"re no longer afraid...?"
"Why should I be afraid? My dear, dear friend, that"s the point!
It beats us all and by its light we win all our victories."
"Even the battle of Koniggratz?"
"Even that one, whatever objections one may have to it. And all future great and remarkable battlefield victories as well! Ah, this air, this light! Let"s climb to the top of that dune once again to take one more look at the holy briny."
"And afterwards, standing in the moonlight, will you tell me some more of your life story?"
"Willingly, with pleasure, immediately, although, in my opinion, it really isn"t necessary any more. You see, dear friend, the fact stands as frightening as it is comfortable to live with that the moon from time to time overwhelms the Royal Prussian legal civil servant Lohnefinke and the latter, ultimately, has not the least objection to raise against the intoxication and dizziness it inspires. Yes, I too found a German girl, wandering in the German moonlight as I did, got engaged to her with the consent of her parents and later married her. And now today I find myself in undisputed possession of an eighteen year old daughter to boot and perhaps afterwards I can introduce both of those ladies to you."
"So you"re not running around by yourself here? You haven"t been left to your own devices on Sylt?"
"Not at all. I live with my wife and daughter in Westerland and have come here to the spa under their supervision. What do you think of my invitation?"
"Forgive me for asking a silly question, colleague. This is such a wonderful evening, such a pleasing encounter and such an extremely interesting conversation that anything is forgivable."
"Calm down. We understand each other perfectly. Unbeknown to you I have had an eye on you all day. You appealed to me as a person and the lawyer in me immediately recognized you as a kindred spirit and fate allowed me to b.u.mp into you literally not without a purpose and with total justification. We had to speak out to each other tonight--it"s part of the cure and is in large part due to the salt water. But the moon--I always have to draw your attention back to that splendid moon. Yes, I am bound to it and will need to remain in its bonds until death us do part..."
"Colleague, because of it and with the help of the present moment and the current state of world affairs, I have become the poet in my family. Hold on to that idea and you grasp me in my entirety, both in my mood when we met on the beach and in my present frame of mind."
Lohnefinke the poet in his family! I took several steps backwards.
Even though this crazy man stood before me in the moonlight as clear as the island of Sylt itself, the notion struck me forcibly. It was like the crack from a cannon that you observed through an eye-gla.s.s as the artillery man blew on the fuse, which is also as if you had received an actual blow.
"I, heir to such an endless stream of prose," my colleague continued, "am defeated by my foe and by him led astray each time he peeps over the horizon despite all my efforts to resist him. I am an idealist in politics and a poet in the conduct of my household affairs. I can see the time coming when I"ll be keeping my books of account in hexameters and ottave rime. I"m a stickler for sentiment and cosiness in the course of an hour, and--colleague! colleague!-- my women, my ladies don"t understand me, don"t latch on to me.
That"s the reason that my nerves are so shattered and the reason why at their instigation (the instigation of my wife and daughter, I mean) I have been brought here to Westerland, and now please do me the honour of coming home with me. It"s gradually starting to get very cool."
He had linked me--with delicacy--and we walked arm in arm over the moonlit heathland of Sylt. Never in my life had I with such a poetic Prussian circuit judge strode out hip to hip. He, my exalted colleague, declaimed poetry in an ever louder voice. He showed a truly staggering well-readness in both German and foreign lyricism.
Poems addressed to the moon gave way to hymns to freedom and songs of battle against all kinds of enemies both thinkable and unthinkable. Tropical landscapes and mood pictures gave way to stanzas taken from familiar and unfamiliar ballads and romances of every historical and non-historical type of content. Lohnefinke was sublime and his enemy, the moon, could really take pleasure in him.
But, being in this state, he would have aroused in more than one of his and my superiors not only moral but also physical disgust. In the distance to the north the revolving light of the lighthouse at Kampen blinked like the eye of a mocker, who draws the attention of those around him to something hilarious. The sheep out on the heath, over whose leashes or retaining ropes we stumbled, stood up and looked after us astonished and amazed.
In this way we got nearer and nearer to the village of Westerland, but before we reached it we were called to and, to all appearances visible and audible, were torn in the nicest possible way out of our dreamy moonlight wandering by night back to reality. Fortunately neither of us fell off the roof.
As if made out of moonbeams there stood before us on a knoll of the heath an uncommonly dainty and graceful female form and a quite charming female face bowed to us in the moonlight and looked phenomenally pretty. Whether Circuit Judge Lohnefinke from Gross-Fauhlenberg had a charming face I cannot say, but he possessed a modest, in a way quite jovial face and his enthusiasm of the last few hours had embellished it. So I was all the more surprised by the expression with which he looked at his lovely daughter. Instead of becoming happier and even more cheerful, his features suddenly went slack and immediately transformed themselves into a cross between sullen and peevish.
"Is that finally you, papa? Well, you"re late I must say!" the elfish phantom cried while coming towards us.
"Yes, it"s finally me," grunted my colleague, "and here..."
He did not complete his sentence for the young lady interrupted him:
"We"ve been waiting for you a long time, papa, and mother is very angry with you!"
"Hm!" grunted my colleague and "hm!" was also what I said in the depths of my soul.
"Come, Helene, let"s go home," said Lohnefinke soothingly, but the moonlit elf retorted even more brusquely:
"Thank you, papa, but I"ll go with mother. She"s coming now and will tell you herself how she"s waited for you. Mother, here"s father finally!"
He was indeed here, the paterfamilias Lohnefinke, and at this moment in time he quoted no more German verse and no more foreign either.
Mother stepped forward through the moonlight, quite quickly and energetically in fact. I would not have been averse to taking my leave before she reached us, but my colleague held my arm fast with the grip of a Prussian dragoon and whispered:
"I want to introduce you. Where are you going? Colleague, allow me to present to you my wife!"
What could I express other than the greatest desire to make the acquaintance of his wife?
Walking between the first houses of the hamlet of Westerland this worthy lady had already caught up with us and taken the arm of her daughter. She overlooked me completely to begin with of course to dedicate herself wholeheartedly to family matters.
"So you"ve finally turned up, Lohnefinke?! Your usual lack of consideration for others as is your wont! Let me tell you, Lohnefinke..."
"My dear Johanna, look who"s here! My friend and correspondent..."
It doesn"t happen very often that one is shoved as a folding screen between a cold draught and the armchair of a rheumatic! The introductions took place and I adapted myself with my inherent good nature to the role meted out to me. After a few polite exchanges the four of us pushed on together to the collection of modest, low, peaceful, Frisian huts and if there was still one last dark spot for me in the soul of my colleague, it vanished completely on this short trek.
How the moon, that German moon, looked down and laughed at the two women and the Royal Prussian Circuit Judge! It knows how to take its revenge alright. It has its means, it knows the means at its disposal and it knows how to use them. My friend Lohnefinke is quite right--it"s a terrible thing to have to inherit the legacy of generations, of centuries past without being permitted beforehand to make use of the privilege in law to limit the amounts owing to one"s creditors. It"s a crying shame first of all not to pay attention to that pallid, waxing and waning companion, then to despise it and finally to be given over to its influence without any great resistance on your part and to surrender oneself!
One needs to be a man--a German man and a civil servant--to be able to experience the full horror of something like this. Mrs Johanna and Miss Helene Lohnefinke, without ever having considered the claims of the moon on people, had sided totally with the moon and were exacting its revenge on him who had despised it. It was not foreseeable how far down they might bring their husband and father--they had brought him down enough as it was.
Late that night, when I was back with my baker, I smoked half a dozen pipes musing over the lessons and experiences of the previous day and decided around midnight to send my son, currently studying mathematics in Gottingen, a copy of the complete works of Jean Paul Friedrich Richter* for his next birthday.
*Jean Paul Friedrich Richter (1763-1825) was born Johann Paul Friedrich Richter and was a German romantic writer of humorous novels and stories. He changed his name to Jean in honour of the French romantic, Jean-Jacques Rousseau.