“Is anybody buried there?” asked Effi.

“Yes, the Chinaman.”

Effi was startled; it came to her like a stab.  But she had strength enough to control herself and ask with apparent composure:  “Ours?”

“Yes, ours.  Of course, he could not be accommodated in the community graveyard and so Captain Thomsen, who was what you might call his friend, bought this patch and had him buried here.  There is also a stone with an inscription.  It all happened before my time, of course, but it is still talked about.”

“So there is something in it after all.  A story.  You said something of the kind this morning.  And I suppose it would be best for me to hear what it is.  So long as I don’t know, I shall always be a victim of my imaginations, in spite of all my good resolutions.  Tell me the real story.  The reality cannot worry me so much as my fancy.”

“Good for you, Effi.  I didn’t intend to speak about it.  But now it comes in naturally, and that is well.  Besides, to tell the truth, it is nothing at all.”

“All the same to me:  nothing at all or much or little.  Only begin.”

“Yes, that is easy to say.  The beginning is always the hardest part, even with stories.  Well, I think I shall begin with Captain Thomsen.”

“Very well.”

“Now Thomsen, whom I have already mentioned, was for many years a so-called China-voyager, always on the way between Shanghai and Singapore with a cargo of rice, and may have been about sixty when he arrived here.  I don’t know whether he was born here or whether he had other relations here.  To make a long story short, now that he was here he sold his ship, an old tub that he disposed of for very little, and bought a house, the same that we are now living in.  For out in the world he had become a wealthy man.  This accounts for the crocodile and the shark and, of course, the ship.  Thomsen was a very adroit man, as I have been told, and well liked, even by Mayor Kirstein, but above all by the man who was at that time the pastor in Kessin, a native of Berlin, who had come here shortly before Thomsen and had met with a great deal of opposition.”

“I believe it.  I notice the same thing.  They are so strict and self-righteous here.  I believe that is Pomeranian.”

“Yes and no, depending.  There are other regions where they are not at all strict and where things go topsy-turvy—­But just see, Effi, there we have the Kroschentin church tower right close in front of us.  Shall we not give up the station and drive over to see old Mrs. von Grasenabb?  Sidonie, if I am rightly informed, is not at home.  So we might risk it.”

“I beg you, Geert, what are you thinking of?  Why, it is heavenly to fly along thus, and I can simply feel myself being restored and all my fear falling from me.  And now you ask me to sacrifice all that merely to pay these old people a flying visit and very likely cause them embarrassment.  For heaven’s sake let us not.  And then I want above all to hear the story.  We were talking about Captain Thomsen, whom I picture to myself as a Dane or an Englishman, very clean, with white stand-up collar, and perfectly white linen.”