This Month's Installment
The italicized bit is what I'm unsure about.
Finally a moment of calm set in. Now Hans too could get his breakfast. It was the last meal that he would have at his preferred window seat, across from the sea. It was completely empty around him, even the large table in the middle of the dining room was vacant.Only one sat at it: the black Russian. He tapped his soft-boiled egg with such ease, as if the whole matter didn't concern him at all, he cut the juicy ham and carried it in large quantities into his obtuse mouth over his thick Van Dyke beard.Nuscha's chair was empty. "She will come with the children," he said to himself. The door opened, the two children appeared, greeted their father respectfully,---97---and took seats across from him. Nuscha's chair remained empty.Where could she be? Had the general confusion swept her away too? Had she already gone with the others? Maybe to have escaped secretly from her government? That he still had to occupy himself with thoughts of her!He had given out his tips and said goodbye to the head waiter. He had always been pleasant to him, he had a quiet, refined way, always showed a friendly expression, even if his heart was sometimes probably rightly outraged, and knew to deal with the most difficult guests sensibly. To-day, however, he saw him grieved for the first time."Summer after summer have I been here in the 'Seastar,'" he said, "it is now the tenth year. And it has always gone well for me, just now in the busiest time, where our profit begins, this unfortunate war!""You are married?""I have a wife and four children in Danzig.""And don't you yourself have to go?""I am considered permanently unfit, a bad heart-""Think of the many who have to leave wife and child now and sacrifice their lives!""You are right, Pastor. It will be a difficult time, and it's a sin to think of one's self now!"Rucksack and coat were strapped on his back, a last greeting look once more over the cherished place, then it was off into the bright, sunny morning towards the home that now called urgently and in which he was more necessary than ever.---98---"Pastor!" it sounded behind him. And when he turned around: Nuscha in the fur-garnished jacket, which despite the heat that, burning and oppressive, had already set in, she had not taken off, the bold, greenish-gray felt hat on her head, the deep black hair protruding over her pale brownish forehead and both temples - exactly as he had seen her the first time."You are also on the journey home," she said in that familiar amusing way, with which she had met him earlier, "and because we probably have the same route, you'll take me with you, right? Yes, I want to be frank, I have already waited for you for quite a while on the bench there, I knew that you would come.""But your government?" he askt, a little uncertain.A sneering laugh. "My government...!?" She pressed her red lips firmly together, as he had quite often observed in her when she wanted to restrain a word. "Last night he askt me to his room. 'A war with Germany is in the air,' he said. 'They will realize that as a higher Russian official I may not keep a German governess in my house. So I release you from my service. Because I want to meet my wife in Danzig, I have nothing against it if you want to leave immediately. By tomorrow I will be ready to go alone with the children.' He gave me the travel money and the rest of my salary, and I was dismissed.""And now - where do you want to go now?""To Marlitten, high up in East Prussia, close to the Russian border. My mother lives there, I told you about her, that after the---99---death of my father she had stayed behind there alone. So we'll travel quite a stretch up to Königsberg together. And that's nice, it's not good to travel alone in this bad time."The sun burned hotter; Nuscha opened her jacket and took the felt hat off her forehead. Her desire to talk appeared to have slackened, he didn't feel like having a conversation either.
Grammatical Minutiae/Commentary
I had been translating "Knebelbart" as "handlebar moustache" because that's the only translation my German dictionary has. This didn't seem to make any sense in the phrase "in den stumpfen Mund über dem dichten Knebelbart." Translating "Knebelbart" as "handlebar moustache" here results in: "into the obtuse mouth above the handlebar moustache." That's not how anatomy works. I did some internet research and discovered that "Knebelbart" (in this context, at least) is actually a Van Dyke beard.
I've been translating "Herrschaft" as "government," but because Nuscha goes right from talking about "Herrschaft" to talking about the Russian statesman, I'm wondering if it may mean something more like "employer" in this context. For now, at least, I kept "government."
Recently, my rate of "sentence (or so) a day" has sped up a bit. If I know all or most of the words in the next sentence, I go ahead and translate that too. A few days this month, I've done two or three sentences. I made it to page 100 (!), but at this rate, it'll still take me about fifteen years to finish the translation (there are 417 pages total). And after that, I should probably go back to smooth out and adjust some of the rougher sections....
