Amalia’s Punishment + 

“But not long afterwards we were overwhelmed with questions from all sides about the story of the letter, we were visited by friends and enemies, acquaintances and complete strangers. Not one of them stayed for any length of time, and our best friends were the quickest to go. Lasemann, usually so slow and dignified, came in hastily as if only to see the size of the room, one look round it and he was gone, it was like a horrible kind of children’s game when he fled and father, shaking himself free from some other people, ran after him to the very door and then gave it up; Brunswick came and gave notice, he said quite honestly that he wanted to set up in business for himself, a shrewd man, he knew how to seize the right moment; customers came and hunted round father’s storeroom for the boots they had left to be repaired, at first father tried to persuade them to change their minds⁠—and we all backed him up as much as we could⁠—but later he gave it up, and without saying a word helped them to find their belongings, line after line in the order-book was cancelled, the pieces of leather people had left with us were handed back, all debts owing us were paid, everything went smoothly without the slightest trouble, they asked for nothing better than to break every connection with us quickly and completely, even if they lost by it; that counted for nothing. And finally, as we might have foreseen, Seemann appeared, the Captain of the Fire Brigade; I can still see the scene before me, Seemann, tall and stout, but with a slight stoop from weakness in the lungs, a serious man who never could laugh, standing in front of my father whom he admired, whom he had promised in confidence to make a deputy Captain, and to whom he had now to say that the Brigade required his services no longer and asked for the return of his diploma. All the people who happened to be in our house left their business for the moment and crowded round the two men, Seemann found it difficult to speak and only kept on tapping father on the shoulder, as if he were trying to tap out of him the words he ought to say and couldn’t find. And he kept on laughing, probably to cheer himself a little and everybody else, but since he’s incapable of laughing and no one had ever heard him laugh, it didn’t occur to anybody that he was really laughing. But father was too tired and desperate after the day he’d had to help anybody out, he looked even too tired to grasp what was happening. We were all in despair, too, but being young didn’t believe in the completeness of our ruin, and kept on expecting that someone in the long procession of visitors would arrive and put a stop to it all and make everything swing the other way again. In our foolishness we thought that Seemann was that very man. We were all keyed up waiting for his laughter to stop, and for the decisive statement to come out at last. What could he be laughing at, if not at the stupid injustice of what had happened to us? Oh Captain, Captain, tell them now at last, we thought, and pressed close to him, but that only made him recoil away from us in the most curious way. At length, however, he did begin to speak, in response not to our secret wishes, but to the encouraging or angry cries of the crowd. Yet still we had hopes. He began with great praise for our father. Called him an ornament to the Brigade, an inimitable model to posterity, an indispensable member whose removal must reduce the Brigade almost to ruin. That was all very fine, had he stopped there. But he went on to say that since in spite of that the Brigade had decided, only as a temporary measure of course, to ask for his resignation, they would all understand the seriousness of the reason which forced the Brigade to do so. Perhaps if father had not distinguished himself so much at the celebration of the previous day it would not have been necessary to go so far, but his very superiority had drawn official attention to the Brigade, and brought it into such prominence that the spotlessness of its reputation was more than ever a matter of honour to it. And now that a messenger had been insulted, the Brigade couldn’t help itself, and he, Seemann, found himself in the difficult position of having to convey its decision. He hoped that father would not make it any more difficult for him. Seemann was glad to have got it out. He was so pleased with himself that he even forgot his exaggerated tact, and pointed to the diploma hanging on the wall and made a sign with his finger. Father nodded and went to fetch it, but his hands trembled so much that he couldn’t get it off the hook. I climbed on a chair and helped him. From that moment he was done for, he didn’t even take the diploma out of its frame, but handed the whole thing over to Seemann. Then he sat down in a corner and neither moved nor spoke to anybody, and we had to attend to the last people there by ourselves as well as we could.” “And where do you see in all this the influence of the Castle?” asked K. “So far it doesn’t seem to have come in. What you’ve told me about is simply the ordinary senseless fear of the people, malicious pleasure in hurting a neighbour, specious friendship, things that can be found anywhere, and, I must say, on the part of your father⁠—at least, so it seems to me⁠—a certain pettiness, for what was the diploma? Merely a testimonial to his abilities, these themselves weren’t taken from him, if they made him indispensable so much the better, and the one way he could have made things difficult for the Captain would have been by flinging the diploma at his feet before he had said two words. But the significant thing to me is that you haven’t mentioned Amalia at all; Amalia, who was to blame for everything, apparently stood quietly in the background and watched the whole house collapse.” “No,” said Olga, “nobody ought to be blamed, nobody could have done anything else, all that was already due to the influence of the Castle.” “Influence of the Castle,” repeated Amalia, who had slipped in unnoticed from the courtyard; the old people had been long in bed. “Is it Castle gossip you’re at? Still sitting with your heads together? And yet you wanted to go away immediately you came, K., and it’s nearly ten now. Are you really interested in that kind of gossip? There are people in the village who live on it, they stick their heads together just like you two and entertain each other by the hour. But I didn’t think you were one of them.” “On the contrary,” said K., “that’s exactly what I am, and moreover people who don’t care for such gossip and leave it all to others don’t interest me particularly.” “Indeed,” said Amalia, “well, there are many different kinds of interest, you know; I heard once of a young man who thought of nothing but the Castle day and night, he neglected everything else and people feared for his reason, his mind was so wholly absorbed by the Castle. It turned out at length, however, that it wasn’t really the Castle he was thinking of, but the daughter of a charwoman in the offices up there, so he got the girl and was all right again.” “I think I would like that man,” said K. “As for your liking the man, I doubt it,” said Amalia, “it’s probably his wife you would like. Well, don’t let me disturb you, I’ve got to go to bed, and I must put out the light for the old folks’ sake. They’re sound asleep now, but they don’t really sleep for more than an hour, and after that the smallest glimmer disturbs them. Good night.” And actually the light went out at once, and Amalia bedded herself somewhere on the floor near her parents. “Who’s the young man she mentioned?” asked K., “I don’t know,” said Olga, “perhaps Brunswick, although it doesn’t fit him exactly, but it might have been somebody else. It’s not easy to follow her, for often one can’t tell whether she’s speaking ironically or in earnest. Mostly she’s in earnest but sounds ironical.” “Never mind explaining,” said K. “How have you come to be so dependent on her? Were things like that before the catastrophe? Or did it happen later? And do you never feel that you want to be independent of her? And is there any sense in your dependence? She’s the youngest, and should give way to you. Innocently or not, she was the person who brought ruin on the family. And instead of begging your pardon for it anew every day she carries her head higher than anybody else, bothers herself about nothing except what she chooses to do for her parents, nothing would induce her to become acquainted with your affairs, to use her own expression, and then if she does speak to you at all she’s mostly in earnest, but sounds ironical. Does she queen it over you on account of her beauty, which you’ve mentioned more than once? Well, you’re all three very like each other, but Amalia’s distinguishing mark is hardly a recommendation, and repelled me the first time I saw it, I mean her cold hard eye. And although she’s the youngest she doesn’t look it, she has the ageless look of women who seem not to grow any older, but seem never to have been young either. You see her every day, you don’t notice the hardness of her face. That’s why, on reflection, I can’t take Sortini’s passion for her very seriously, perhaps he sent the letter simply to punish her, but not to summon her.” “I won’t argue about Sortini,” said Olga, “for the Castle gentlemen everything is possible, let a girl be as pretty or as ugly as you like. But in all the rest you’re utterly mistaken so far as Amalia is concerned. I have no particular motive for winning you over to Amalia’s side, and if I try to do it it’s only for your own sake. Amalia in some way or other was the cause of our misfortunes, that’s true, but not even my father, who was the hardest hit, and who was never very sparing of his tongue, particularly at home, not even my father has ever said a word of reproach to Amalia even in our very worst times. Not because he approved of her action, he was an admirer of Sortini’s, and how could he have approved of it? He couldn’t understand it even remotely, for Sortini he would have been glad to sacrifice himself and all that was his, although hardly in the way things actually happened, as an outcome apparently of Sortini’s anger. I say apparently, for we never heard another word from Sortini; if he was reticent before then, from that day on he might as well have been dead. Now, you should have seen Amalia at that time. We all knew that no definite punishment would be visited on us. We were only shunned. By the village and by the Castle. But while we couldn’t help noticing the ostracism of the village, the Castle gave us no sign. Of course we had had no sign of favour from the Castle in the past, so how could we notice the reverse? This blankness was the worst of all. It was far worse than the withdrawal of the people down here, for they hadn’t deserted us out of conviction, perhaps they had nothing very serious against us, they didn’t despise us then as they do today, they only did it out of fear, and were waiting to see what would happen next. And we weren’t afraid of being stranded, for all our debtors had paid us, the settling-up had been entirely in our favour, and any provisions we didn’t have were sent us secretly by relations, it was easy enough for us, it was harvest time⁠—though we had no fields of our own and nobody would take us on as workers, so that for the first time in our lives we were condemned to go nearly idle. So there we sat all together with the windows shut in the heats of July and August. Nothing happened. No invitations, no news, no callers, nothing.” “Well,” said K., “since nothing happened and you had no definite punishment hanging over you, what was there to be afraid of? What people you are!” “How am I to explain it?” said Olga. “We weren’t afraid of anything in the future, we were suffering under the immediate present, we were actually enduring our punishment. The others in the village were only waiting for us to come to them, for father to open his workshop again, for Amalia, who could sew the most beautiful clothes, fit for the best families, to come asking for orders again, they were all sorry to have had to act as they did; when a respected family is suddenly cut out of village life it means a loss for everybody, so when they broke with us they thought they were only doing their duty, in their place we should have done just the same. They didn’t know very clearly what was the matter, except that the messenger had returned to the Herrenhof with a handful of torn paper. Frieda had seen him go out and come back, had exchanged a few words with him, and then spread what she had learned everywhere. But not in the least from enmity to us, simply from a sense of duty which anybody would have felt in the same circumstances. And, as I’ve said, a happy ending to the whole story would have pleased everybody best. If we had suddenly put in an appearance with the news that everything was settled, that it had only been a misunderstanding, say, which was now quite cleared up, or that there had been actually some cause for offence which had now been made good, or else⁠—and even this would have satisfied people⁠—that through our influence in the Castle the affair had been dropped, we should certainly have been received again with open arms, there would have been kissings and congratulations, I have seen that kind of thing happen to others once or twice already. And it wouldn’t have been necessary to say even as much as that; if we had only come out in the open and shown ourselves, if we had picked up our old connections without letting fall a single word about the affair of the letter, it would have been enough, they would all have been glad to avoid mentioning the matter; it was the painfulness of the subject as much as their fear that made them draw away from us, simply to avoid hearing about it or speaking about it or thinking about it or being affected by it in any way. When Frieda gave it away it wasn’t out of mischief but as a warning, to let the parish know that something had happened which everybody should be careful to keep clear of. It wasn’t our family that was taboo, it was the affair, and our family only in so far as we were mixed up in the affair. So if we had quietly come forward again and let bygones be bygones and shown by our behaviour that the incident was closed, no matter in what way, and reassured public opinion that it was never likely to be mentioned again, whatever its nature had been, everything would have been made all right in that way too, we should have found friends on all sides as before, and even if we hadn’t completely forgotten what had happened people would have understood and helped us to forget it completely. Instead of that we sat in the house. I don’t know what we were expecting, probably some decision from Amalia, for on that morning she had taken the lead in the family and she still maintained it. Without any particular contriving or commanding or imploring, almost by her silence alone. We others, of course, had plenty to discuss, there was a steady whispering from morning till evening, and sometimes father would call me to him in sudden panic and I would have to spend half the night on the edge of his bed. Or we would often creep away together, I and Barnabas, who knew nothing about it all at first, and was always in a fever for some explanation, always the same, for he realised well enough that the carefree years that others of his age looked forward to were now out of the question for him, so we used to put our heads together, K., just like us two now, and forget that it was night, and that morning had come again. Our mother was the feeblest of us all, probably because she had not only endured our common sorrows but the private sorrow of each of us, and so we were horrified to see changes in her which, as we guessed, lay in wait for all of us. Her favourite seat was the corner of the sofa, it’s long since we parted with it, it stands now in Brunswick’s big living-room, well, there she sat and⁠—we couldn’t tell exactly what was wrong⁠—used to doze or carry on long conversations with herself, we guessed it from the moving of her lips. It was so natural for us to be always discussing the letter, to be always turning it over in all its known details and unknown potentialities, and to be always outdoing each other in thinking out plans for restoring our fortunes; it was natural and unavoidable, but not good, we only plunged deeper and deeper into what we wanted to escape from. And what good were these inspirations, however brilliant? None of them could be acted on without Amalia, they were all tentative, and quite useless because they stopped short of Amalia, and even if they had been put to Amalia they would have met with nothing but silence. Well, I’m glad to say I understand Amalia better now than I did then. She had more to endure than all of us, it’s incomprehensible how she managed to endure it and still survive. Mother, perhaps, had to endure all our troubles, but that was because they came pouring in on her; and she didn’t hold out for long; no one could say that she’s holding out against them today, and even at that time her mind was beginning to go. But Amalia not only suffered, she had the understanding to see her suffering clearly, we saw only the effects, but she knew the cause, we hoped for some small relief or other, she knew that everything was decided, we had to whisper, she had only to be silent. She stood face to face with the truth and went on living and endured her life then as now. In all our straits we were better off than she. Of course, we had to leave our house. Brunswick took it on, and we were given this cottage, we brought our things over in several journeys with a handcart, Barnabas and I pulling and father and Amalia pushing behind, mother was already sitting here on a chest, for we had brought her here first, and she whimpered softly all the time. Yet I remember than even during those toilsome journeys⁠—they were painful, too, for we often met harvest wagons, and the people became silent when they saw us and turned away their faces⁠—even during those journeys Barnabas and I couldn’t stop discussing our troubles and our plans, so that we often stood stock still in the middle of pulling and had to be roused by father’s ‘Hallo’ from behind. But all our talking made no difference to our life after the removal, except that we began gradually to feel the pinch of poverty as well. Our relatives stopped sending us things, our money was almost done, and that was the time when people first began to despise us in the way you can see now. They saw that we hadn’t the strength to shake ourselves clear of the scandal, and they were irritated. They didn’t underestimate our difficulties, although they didn’t know exactly what they were, and they knew that probably they wouldn’t have stood up to them any better themselves, but that made it only all the more needful to keep clear of us⁠—if we had triumphed they would have honoured us correspondingly, but since we failed they turned what had only been a temporary measure into a final resolve, and cut us off from the community forever. We were no longer spoken of as ordinary human beings, our very name was never mentioned, if they had to refer to us they called us Barnabas’s people, for he was the least guilty; even our cottage gained in evil reputation, and you yourself must admit, if you’re honest, that on your first entry into it you thought it justified its reputation; later on, when people occasionally visited us again, they used to screw up their noses at the most trivial things, for instance, because the little oil-lamp hung over the table. Where should it hang if not over the table? and yet they found it insupportable. But if we hung the lamp somewhere else they were still disgusted. Whatever we did, whatever we had, it was all despicable.” + 