Novissima Sinica (page 12)
Janosch A. Prufrock and Emil Hering stopped at the sea-bridge, that pier extending from Vineta into the calm, cold Baltic Sea.
At the end of the sea-bridge, where there is a diving gondola, Janosch A. Prufrock looked to the east, into the distance, and asked, “When it’s not night-time, and the day is clear, can one see to Swinemünde?”
Emil Hering looked into the pitch darkness, “I can see it now.”
If Janosch A. Prufrock was surprised, he did not show it. Instead, he merely said, “In Swinemünde Clara Wieck is playing a klavier concert. How I wish to hear her again. There’s a small klavier in the ballroom of Villa Undine, perhaps we can persuade her to play when she comes here for the Kaiser Days.”
If Emil Hering was surprised Janosch A. Prufrock is familiar with both his guest list and guesthouse equipment, he kept it to himself.
“No doubt her new husband, Robert Schumann will come as well,” Janosch A. Prufrock had an uncharacteristically sour note in his once smooth voice.
Emil Hering looked at the older man. His age was hard to ascertain. There was a cosmopolitan air about him, despite the thinning hair and already thin limbs. His face had a loneliness to it. And Janosch A. Prufrock was looking at his own hands now, extending the long, thin fingers, and bending them.
Janosch A. Prufrock looked up at him and smiled a far-way, long-ago smile, “Robert Schumann wasn’t the only one who once studied with the great piano teacher Friedrich Wieck, wrote novels in Leipzig, or admired his daughter Clara, now Schumann. And now they both come. Van Beethoven will as well. Doktor Doktor Bombastus Paracelsus the father of modern alchemy. And Wilhelmina Wang a princess from Chang’an, her firefox Huohu, the poet-swordsman Li Bai, and his tiger Laohu. Novissima sinica. Eight in Villa Undine of Vineta on the island of Usedom. Three musicians and an alchemist of the highest merit from Magna Germania, and four from Cathay, all gathered here. Why?”
“Ten in Villa Undine,” Emil Hering thought to himself, “you did not include you, or me. Why indeed?”