This Month's Installment
Now the music also broke off, in the middle of the thrilling waltz, abruptly and without any conclusion. What had happened?
"The successor to the Austrian throne has been murdered... with his wife!"
For a moment he stood as if paralyzed, while the terrible knowledge flew around him from mouth to mouth. Curses became loud, plonked away, sounded over the bridge and the paths. There, the words that Fritz spoke back then in the idyll of the Pronitt parish garden were stirred up in him. Now he knew that the war would come.
At the exit of the Kur house he met the pretty stranger from the "starfish." She lookt completely changed. A silk skirt, which shimmered in all colors, flowed like water on the lithe body down to her feet, which were in delicate, white beach shoes, a not tasteless but striking blouse, and an affected panama hat with a narrow red band, which left her drawn up face in the shade. Her eyes greeted him as a good friend, her white, slightly pointed teeth, sparkled. Not the slightest excitement that one read on all faces in this hour was to be seen on her.
"Haven't you heard it yet?" he askt without any address.
"Heard what? Oh... about the assassination down there? Of course I've heard about it."
"And are so calm, so..." he wanted to say "happy," but he improved: "So unconcerned about it?"
"Unconcerned!? My goodness! It is sad. But so many sad things happen in the world."
---64---
She saw his astonishment. "I show to him the human compassion that this case must give rise to in every sympathetic heart."
"But here it's a question of more than pure human compassion."
She shook her head. "Not for me; I am not able to attach any conclusions to it, as I have just now heard a few of my friends express."
They were going the same way, so he stayed by her side. Although everything was now occupied with other thoughts, he still noticed that she attracted the attention of the passersby. She seemed to be used to it, it didn't concern her. In her lively way, she spoke about Zoppot and the wonderful people who would meet together in such a bath. "Half are Poles, even a few Russians are in the 'starfish.' And even a Frenchman, a real genuine one. Did you see him yester-day? The young, slender man with the small, dark goatee, the long, white hands, and the fine, translucent skin; he sat directly opposite you."
"People don't interest me like they do you."
---&---
Grammatical Minutiae/Commentary
"Successor to the throne" is one word in German: Thronfolger. The text has "Der österreichische Thronfolger," which could be translated as "the Austrian successor to the throne," but I felt that "the successor to the Austrian throne" flowed better. As I get further along, I may have to amend this.It doesn't quite fit the tenor of the situation, but the only translation my dictionary offered for "sich pflanzen" is "to plonk," so I have "Curses... plonked away...."
I got stuck for a while on translating "Idnlle" before I discovered that what I was reading as an "n" is actually a "y." Then, it was obvious (Idylle is a cognate). I vaguely remember seeing this same character somewhere before, but there's no way of tracking it down now unless I went through every page again. (Because of this, I've started transcribing the original German text into Google Documents, so I can search them if I need to.)
The sentence describing what the stranger is wearing ("A silk skirt, which shimmered in all colors...") seems to alternate between clauses and a list. I simply tried to translate it faithfully; that it reads oddly isn't my fault.
My dictionary translates "Meuchelmorde" as "treacherous killing," which I found oddly specific. Since it also lists Meuchelmörder as murderer or assassin, I translated "Meuchelmorde" simply as "assassination."
Instead of breaking up sentences into clauses, like I had been doing, I translated a whole sentence every day, so this month's installment might be a bit longer than previous ones. I'm going to try to continue this in the future.
