r there was little stir in the air. They flew past Utpatel's
mill, which turned very slowly, and drove so close to the churchyard
that the tips of the barberry bushes which hung out over the lattice
brushed against Effi, and showered snow upon her blanket. On the other
side of the road was a fenced-in plot, not much larger than a garden
bed, and with nothing to be seen inside except a young pine tree,
which rose out of the centre.

"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