And so it came about that she saw the emperor (standing as solitary as an imperial mushroom). He spoke in terse commands. His gestures wiped everything imaginary off the table. At every turn he had to create facts. Comical to see how he treated those little merchants. His knowledge of the city's finances was staggering. His gaze, addressed to all, including Sophie. While serving the restless man — he ate standing up — canapes of smoked Vistula salmon, she curtseyed and begged mercy for her imprisoned Fritz, whereupon the emperor uttered a sharp command, and she was taken aside by General Rapp, his aide-de-camp.
Rapp, who had just been appointed governor of the Republic of Danzig, gave Sophie his promise — he would look into the matter quickly. He tried his Alsatian wit on her, was pleased with her replies, salted as they were with seaport wit, and offered to put her in charge of his, the governor's, kitchen. That, he intimated, would make it so much simpler to help her Fritz.
From then on Sophie cooked not for Pastor Blech but
only for Rapp (who, however, was also me) and for Rapp's guests. And because Rapp was wild about mushrooms, she gathered mushrooms for Rapp alone when the summer egg mushrooms sprouted and later when the autumn chestnut mushrooms and greenies shot up in mounds and the imperial mushroom stood solitary. But in among beech trees or on the pine-needle floors where she found puffballs and orange agaric, Sophie thought fondly and exclusively of me, her Fritz.
Our love, Ilsebill, all the things we've whispered with tightened throats, tucked away in letters, trumpeted down from towers or over the telephone, outroaring the sea or stiller than thought, our love, which we've fenced about so securely, packed up so secretly in hatboxes with all sorts of trifles, which was once as conspicuous as a missing button, and incised under varying names in the bark of every tree, it, our love, which only yesterday was palpable, an object of daily use, our all-purpose glue, our slogan, our bathroom motto, our flickering silent film, our evening prayer spoken as we shivered in our nightshirts, our love, a push button that would play our sweet pop song over and over again, our love, which ran barefoot through the quaking grass, our love, that (almost intact) brick in a ruined wall, our love, which we lost while housecleaning and looking for something else, and found among the usual justifications disguised as a pencil sharpener, our love, which never expected to die, is no more, Ilsebill. Or it consents to be possible (or to exist) only under certain conditions. Or it still exists — but somewhere else. Or it never was and for that very reason is still thinkable. Or suppose, like Sophie and me, we go gathering mushrooms again and look for it deep in the woods. (But when an imperial mushroom stood solitary, beyond compare, and was found by you or you, you never had me in mind.)
So much has been written about it. They say it hurts. They say it tinges everything blue. They say it's the one thing that can't be bought. Where it's lacking, there's a hole, a heart-shaped hole. No one can deliberately turn it on or off. It's always undivided. But Agnes the kitchenmaid loved me and also me. And when Mother Rusch sapped Preacher Hegge's strength, she seems to have had me, too, in mind. While Ilsebill recognizes herself in my High Gothic Doro-
thea or mistakes me for her wishes. But Sophie, whom I loved as Pastor Blech and as Governor Rapp, loved only and undividedly me, her Fritz, who spent his life in fortress arrest, faraway and unerodable, while Sophie went gathering mushrooms for others (first for Blech, then for Rapp), always with freedom, the beautiful idea, in mind when she found, announced or betrayed by fly agaric, the imperial mushroom standing solitary.
From the early summer of 1807 to the fall of 1813, Sophie Rotzoll cooked for the governor of the Republic of Danzig and his numerous guests. (In the meantime her grandmother had died, and shortly thereafter her mother, of grief, so it was said, at hearing her daughter decried as the governor's whore.)
This is what Pastor Blech, deacon of Saint Mary's, had to say of Jean Rapp, his rival for Sophie's affections: "A young man of about thirty, a child of fortune who like his master had risen quickly from the obscure middle class to a high military rank, sporting several medals on the costly uniform of a general and an aide-de-camp, he almost led me, with his smiling face and not unfriendly gestures, to mistake him for a benevolent spirit. But just as his good qualities were not grounded in sound principles of virtue, so his faults did not emanate from an inherently evil nature; all his faults and all his virtues were, rather, those of an impetuous weakling, a plaything of circumstances and conditions, moods, fancies, and passions. Hence his easily wounded pride and his increasing love of ostentation; hence his tendency to lend ear to every wretched purveyor of gossip and make sudden decisions that have brought untold harm to many an innocent; hence the thoughtless mockery with which he often receives the most just complaints; hence the abandon that has often led him to make the most sacred promises and fail to keep them; hence, finally, his lechery, which he has not always shamed to display in public. ." When I think of myself today as Rapp, I cannot help agreeing with what I, as Pastor Blech, said about him. Oh, how that generous and at the same time rapacious man, now playfully gallant, now bestially lecherous, tortured poor Sophie over the years with his constantly reiterated promises
to help the imprisoned Fritz; how often his love, rather touching in itself and made more so by his awkwardness and bashfulness, became brutal and importunate; and how often his cynical abuse of power and contempt for the common man's aspiration to freedom offended Sophie's still-childlike faith in the beautiful idea, with the result that, as the French occupation went on, she began first to suspect, then to dislike, and finally to detest everything connected with Napoleon.
And when, after five and a half years, history went into reverse and the Grand Army was decimated in Russia, when Rapp, who on the emperor's order had taken part in the campaign, tried to compensate with ill humor for the frost damage he had incurred, Sophie had grown up to be his enemy who, when gathering mushrooms, considered not only the edible varieties but also those that can be politically effective.
In January 1813, hard pressed by Cossacks, the Grand-jean, Heudelet, Marchand, and Cavaignac divisions took refuge behind the city walls. The garrison was reinforced by Polish legionaries, Westphalians from the Rhenish Confederation, a regiment of Bavarians, three regiments of Neapolitans, and a certain number of French chasseurs and cuirassiers. By the time the warehouses on Warehouse Island were freshly stocked with provisions, the bastions were equipped with additional cannon, and the Russo-Prussian siege army had at last closed the ring around the city, Sophie's plan was ready; but then, at the beginning of March, there were no suitable mushrooms.
After daily skirmishes and foraging expeditions up to Schiedlitz and onto the Island, after the first utilization of Congreve rockets, after extensive fires and epidemics, when, after six months of unremitting hunger, the midsummer floods surpassed all bounds, because heavy rainfall had so swollen the Vistula that the dikes from Schwetz to Montau Point burst in seven places and the lowlands were under water as far as the city bastions, that all the outworks, Fort Napoleon, and Fort Desaix were cut off, that palisades went drifting through the flooded streets along with household wares, and fish could easily be caught in large quantities by
anyone with a net — a miracle that fed the whole population — when, in short, the midsummer floods had completely fouled the military plans of besieged and besieger alike, and peasants fleeing from the Island managed to pass through the siege ring and into the city by water, foodstuffs that had become rare, such as fruit, vegetables, eggs, and Glumse, reappeared in the half-starved city; and early in September Sophie began to hope that certain mushrooms she had ordered would be delivered. Her hate had boiled down to a recipe.