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.
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