Elderflowers

A Recollection of the “House of Life”

by Wilhelm Raabe

Table of Contents

Table of Contents
part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

conclusion

In the Jewish quarter, it was as quiet as the grave. the silence was unnerving. Once again I rang the bell at the entrance to Beth Chaim and, once again, a grille was opened in the gate, and the wrinkled, nearly centenarian face of the guardian of this “House of Life” appeared in the opening and, at the same time, the bolt was pulled back.

“So it’s you!” said the old man. “I knew that somehow I’d see you again. Come through!”

He walked in front of me and I followed him down the shadowy graveyard paths and the festive exultations of a thousand clamouring voices in the great city of Prague were blotted out by the silence. The elder flowers in bloom made a splendid show over the graves but there were no birds to sing in them.

“Have they already told you she’s passed on?” said the greybeard.

I nodded, and the latter continued and spoke almost word for word like the royal psalmist of his people: “I am like one forsaken among the dead, like one whose joy has been removed from him. The loveliest flower of the field has been plucked and the voice of the cantor is no more heard among us.”

He gently took hold of my hand: “Do not weep, my son. What they always say is always true: tears won’t bring her back to us. Perhaps it was wrong of me to drive you away, but who could have said then what was right and what was wrong? Her funeral was only last week. The greatest of physicians were at her bedside but were powerless to help her. She was right. Her heart was too big. Do not hold yourself responsible for her death. You were just as sick as she was. All those scholarly gentlemen agreed that she couldn’t have held out much longer at best.

“Her memories of you, my son, were joyful ones, expressed with affection and in terms of endearment. You were a ray of sunlight in her short, dark and poverty-stricken life. Through you, she became conversant with the blue vault of heaven and the land of the living of which I had kept her so fearfully ignorant. You brought her much joy and a great deal of happiness, and a thousand blessings intended for you were on her lips when she died. Oh, it was a great, sad and beautiful miracle how even her thoughts as well as the whole of her physical being were utterly transformed.

“The Lord of All knows best how to lead His children out of darkness, out from behind prison walls into light and freedom. She was beautiful when she died, truly beautiful. I could only keep her hostage here and so the God of the Living took her from me to be with Him forever in the real ‘House of Life’. May His name be ever glorified!”

What answer I made to the old man’s words I no longer know. “Remember the elderflower!” she had said, and how I did remember it throughout my life I have just related. Her grave was not to be found in the old Jewish cemetery in Josephstown for the good emperor Joseph had forbidden any further burials to take place there. Mahalath’s had been the last.

* * *

I have taken a long time to write down all the memories that went through my mind as I held that garland of elderflowers in my hand which another dead girl had worn. Now a grieving mother took it off me and put it back into the pretty box from which she had taken it in the first place.

Then she laid her hand upon my shoulder: “How grateful I am to you, doctor, for sharing my grief so closely.”

I looked at her, incapable of a reply. The fire in the stove had gone out, and the room had grown cold. The sun had gone down behind the skyline. The brightness of that winter day had faded. I cannot describe how heavily I felt the burden of my years weigh down on me.

Sadder, yes, but none the worse for that, I made my way downstairs again, past an ever-young and meditative muse, and left that quiet, chilly, fatal house behind me.