Free Perlefter by Joseph Roth Page A

heart. So Henriette stayed.
    After that she chased after a man from the gas works. He even came into the kitchen on Sundays. But the reason for this was a suddenly flaring love for the two maids.
    After that a policeman, a tailor and a mason came on to the scene. All of them wanted to marry Henriette. But she hesitated for quite a while, for she could not leave Perlefter’s house. The policeman died of pleurisy, the tailor disappeared from the picture and the mason fell off a table in his house and broke a leg. It was quite remarkable that the mason fell off a table despite having the chance to plunge from respectably high scaffolding on a daily basis. He made a fool of himself and fell off a table. Perhaps he had, at that moment, been thinking of Henriette. Henriette visited him once in the hospital, but she could not tolerate the smell of iodoform. She fainted and never returned.
    Yet I knew she would come to me if I were bandaged and reeking of iodoform in the hospital. For Henriette had not forgotten me. She loved me more maternally, and the older I got the younger I appeared in her eyes.
    I accompanied her more often to her native village. I carried her hat and, when it was wet, also her shoes andstockings. Once when her mother was sick, a second time when her stepfather died and a third when her uncle married his third wife. But we argued no more over the species of twittering birds. We consistently agreed about all things. We spoke about all our concerns, and sometimes I even related something from books I had read. Henriette was very proud of me and prophesized a great future.
    We abstained but loved each other none the less.
    I would have done anything for Henriette. But we didn’t use the familiar form of ‘you’ in front of others.
    She suggested that I should turn my attention to Margarete.
    I then had much money. Surely I was worth much more than those young men who came to the house.
    â€˜I don’t need money,’ I said.
    â€˜You’re a foolish boy!’ said Henriette.
    So we walked peaceably next to each other and arrived at the village. I ate cheese and sour milk and porridge that Henriette cooked for me. Porridge was usually eaten only by the sick and by new mothers. Before I went to sleep Henriette squeezed my hand.
    It was just around that time, when Fredy’s engagement party was to take place and when Perlefter had returned home from his bold flight, that a rich and widowed farmer courted Henriette.
    When Perlefter heard about it, he said, ‘We cannot and must not stand in the way of their happiness!’ Frau Perlefter began to cry. She even began to feel ill and took bromide. But this time Henriette stuck by herdecision to marry. She was attracted by the large farm and the role she would play in her village.
    It was ambition.
    The Perlefter family decided that Henriette could go off immediately after Fredy’s official engagement.
    But Fredy’s official engagement depended on the engagement of his sister. Henriette, meanwhile, worked on sewing her trousseau. Every Sunday she went to the village. She brought back milk, butter, radishes, sauer-kraut and country bread.
    She looked almost like her mother did many years before. One had to look at Henriette’s face for a long time to realize that she was once pretty.
    By this time Henriette had a pale yellow face. Neither the joy of surprise, nor heat from the kitchen, nor a winter’s storm and wind could turn her cheeks red. They were emaciated cheeks. Her forehead jutted out and shaded her face, and deep within, like bay windows, lay her triangular-shaped blue, pale and hard-looking eyes.
    And yet I still loved Henriette, and every day I was ready to marry her just as she was with her strong bony hands and skin that was like leather.
    When Perlefter found out about my love he took me for crazy. He was speechless.
    Perlefter was already two weeks at home. But he was still recounting stories of his travels.