Waves by Eduard von Keyserling

Author:Eduard von Keyserling
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781912868162
Publisher: Dedalus
Published: 2019-03-21T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

Privy Counsellor Knospelius had come for late afternoon coffee at the Bull’s Inn. He sat comfortably at the long table on the veranda, which was dappled by the flickering patterns of light and shadow cast by the leaves of the runner beans. It smelled of sweat pea bouquets and fresh bread. Smiling to himself, Knospelius looked at the row of young faces at the lower end of the table. “Family meal, family table,” he said to the Generalin, and his wide mouth pronounced these words as if he were slurping an oyster. “For me this is a rare but exquisite pleasure. From time to time I have experienced this pleasure at my sister’s place in Thuringia. There is something sacred about a family meal. It is, if I may say so, the very foundation of the family. As long as all is well with the family meal, then the family itself cannot be doing badly.”

“Well, we have, thank God, some other foundations as well,” replied Baroness Buttlär

“My brother-in-law,” continued the Privy Counsellor, “said to my sister: ‘Karoline, if I should die in the morning, there would be no reason whatsoever for meals not to be served punctually like any other day – to do otherwise would increase the confusion.’ It is the same as what happens when the great passenger steamers suffer an accident but continue to serve dinner punctiliously right up to the very last minute. It is, so to speak, the symbol of moral order.”

Baron Buttlär nodded earnestly and said: “Yes, the family is after all the basis of the state – the family and landed property,” and he gradually turned the discussion to taxes and brandy. But the Privy Counsellor refused to join in, today he wanted to enjoy a success with the young people at the end of the table. He told anecdotes, and as he did so he glanced over at the young people to see if they were laughing. Later he revealed the purpose of his visit. Tomorrow he would be throwing a small party in the countryside, and he hoped that all of the ladies and gentlemen present would attend. “The occasion for this celebration,” he said, “is my birthday. Well now, getting older may have its good sides, but when all is said and done it’s not a very good excuse for a party. This world of ours is indeed quite dubious, but we are in no great hurry to leave it, because in the first place the scheme for what follows is not entirely clear, and secondly we are stuck here anyway. No, I celebrate the date of my birth, because being born is actually the strangest moment of our lives, with unforeseeable consequences. Just consider, a world without Knospelius, and a world with Knospelius, for me that is an enormous difference.”

Satisfied with his argument, he now looked at Nini, who blushed in response.

“What you say, my dear Excellency,” remarked the Generalin, “is certainly very clever, but in the process you seem to have left your position on religion a bit unclear.

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