The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald Page A

procession - one or two of them stuck, and he had to tug and heave - would go on forever.
    ‘Linnets! They won’t go far!’ shouted George. ‘Three at a time I could crunch them.’
    ‘All feel that I have nothing to do,’ said Herr Rockenthien, ‘although in truth this is one of our busiest times, and it will be one of my responsibilities to see that order is kept during the Advent Fair.’
    ‘Where is this fair?’ asked Fritz - it’s not in order to fichtisieren here, he told himself - better to say no more about it.
    ‘Oh, at Greussen, two miles away,’ cried Sophie. ‘It is the only thing that ever happens here, except the summer and the autumn fairs, and they also are at Greussen.’
    ‘But you haven’t yet been to the Leipzig fair?’ Fritz asked her.
    No, Sophie had never even so much as been to Leipzig. At the very thought of it her eyes shone, her lips parted.
    What or whom does she look like? he thought, with this rich hair, and her long, pretty nose, not at all like her mother’s. Nor were her arched eyebrows. In the third volume of Lavater’s Physiognomische Fragmente there was an illustration, after a copperplate by Johann Heinrich Lips, of Raphael’s self-portrait at the age of twenty-five. This picture had exactly the air of Sophie. From the copperplate, of course, you couldn’t tell the colour, or the tonality of the flesh, only that the expression was unworldly and humane and that the large eyes were dark as night.
    In his first quarter of an hour, at the window of the great Saal , Fritz had already opened his heart to Sophie. Now let me get to know her, he thought. How difficult will that be?
    ‘If we are going to spend our lives together,’ he said, ‘I should like to learn everything about you.’
    ‘Yes, but you must not call me du .’
    ‘Very well, I will not, until you give me permission.’
    He thought, let’s make the attempt, even though it’s possible that she would rather play with the little brother and sister. They were on the long, broad terrace between the house and the garden, which had been swept almostclear of snow. Mimi and Rudi, young and obstreperous, ran beside them with their iron-bound hoops. ‘ Lass das , Freiherr, you don’t know how to hit it,’ Rudi had cried sharply, but Fritz did know, having been brought up in a house of many hoops, and he whacked first one and then the other hard and true so that they spun away and had to be pursued almost out of sight.
    ‘Now, tell me what you think about poetry.’
    ‘I don’t think about it at all,’ said Sophie.
    ‘But you would not want to hurt a poet’s feelings.’
    ‘I would not want to hurt anyone’s feelings.’
    ‘Let us speak of something else. What do you like best to eat?’
    Cabbage soup, Sophie told him, and a nice smoked eel.
    ‘What is your opinion of wine and tobacco?’
    ‘Those, too, I like.’
    ‘Do you smoke, then?’
    ‘Yes, my stepfather gave me a pipe.’
    ‘And music?’
    ‘Ah, that I love. A few months ago there were some students in the town and they played a serenade.’
    ‘What did they play?’
    ‘They played “Wenn die Liebe in deinen blauen Augen”. That of course could not be for me, my eyes are dark, but it was very beautiful.’
    Singing, yes. Dancing, yes, most certainly, but she wasnot permitted to attend the public balls until she was fourteen.
    ‘Do you remember the question I asked you when I first met you, by the window?’
    ‘No, I don’t remember it.’
    ‘I asked you whether you had thought at all about marriage.’
    ‘Oh, I am afraid of that.’
    ‘You did not say that when we spoke of it by the window.’
    She repeated, ‘I am afraid of that.’ After Rudi, with Mimi whimpering after him, had returned and been dismissed again (‘Poor souls! They are getting out of breath!’ said Sophie.) he asked her about her faith. She answered readily. They kept the days of penitence, of course, and on Sundays they went to the church, but she did not