The Emperor Waltz Read Online Free PDF

patient rounds, still wearing his white summer overall.

7.
    The next day, Christian had decided to go out soon after breakfast, and to find the school building at least. He had always had a desire to place himself within cities; not to spend more time than necessary wandering without a notion, and not to put up with living in a city in a state of ignorance about its quarters. He slept well – once, in the night, he woke up and was unsure where he was until he heard an owl calling in the park, and what must be the creak of a roof adjusting as the night cooled. He had never slept anywhere other than with a family above, and a family below; he had never slept in a room with a sloping wall, like this one, underneath a long roof of tiles, and he looked forward to being woken in the night by the rattle of rain or hail. The pillow was warm, and he raised his head and turned it to the cool side. There was a faint smell of fresh laundry about the sheets, the smell that linen had after being dried in the open air. He felt, as he drowsily moved his hands from one side of the tight-wrapped bed to the other, that there was something restless about being in the same house and sharing the same sleep as people he had never met before yesterday, whose Christian names he did not know, who were not related to him or to each other in any way. They were brought together by force and by money, he sleepily said to himself, force and money, Neddermeyer and Scherbatsky, Scherbatsky and Neddermeyer, and the third one, whose name was … whose name was … But Herr Wolff’s name did not come to him in the night; it came to him only with a satisfying abruptness when he was washing his face and torso at the washbasin in the morning. Wolff. He wondered if he had returned from Erfurt last night after they had all gone to bed.
    ‘I shall not be in for lunch, Frau Scherbatsky,’ Christian said, when he had finished breakfast.
    ‘If only,’ Frau Scherbatsky said. ‘If only all my guests were so considerate!’
    Neddermeyer, reading the Morgenblatt , lowered it and shook his head sympathetically.
    ‘I’m sure he has important business in Erfurt,’ Frau Scherbatsky said. ‘Still, Maria grows very testy at the uncertainty.’
    ‘Cook a nice rabbit stew,’ Neddermeyer said. ‘And keep everyone happy, however many you find yourself entertaining.’
    Frau Scherbatsky clapped her hands. ‘What an excellent idea! My mother – you know, Herr Vogt, I am quite a country lass – my mother always said that she would prefer a well-made rabbit stew to any fricassee or ragout. My father was always very pleased at shooting a brace because rabbits are a dreadful pest in the wrong place, which of course rabbits always are, in the wrong place, I mean. Yes, a rabbit stew it shall be, tonight, with some very nice little turnips from the garden.’
    Christian left the house after breakfast, and walked along the road, still a rough lane, that led along the side of the park. He felt, in his loose jacket and short tie, like a man who belonged in this famous town. The houses here, like Frau Scherbatsky’s, were substantial and artistically made. Outside one, with a steep-pitched red roof and a yellow door, a pair of green-painted benches were placed in the lane for the rest of the weary traveller, or so the painted motto from Goethe stated on the wall. Another had a flat roof, of southern inspiration, and others had friezes of angels and devils painted along the walls, under the roofs. There was a pleasant smell of coffee being made from one of the houses, and the sound of eggs being fried; the clatter of knives came out of the open window of one kitchen. ‘“Alfred, Alfred, you’ll be the death of me,”’ the song of last year, burst out; a scullery-maid came out of one kitchen door singing; she threw her bowlful of eggshells, peelings and muddy vegetable water over the compost heap, scattering the half-dozen white chickens who were picking over it with squawks