Mignon

By Laura Schiller

Based on Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Every evening, after Kitty and Minnie had gone to bed, their hardworking governess Jo found herself ensconced in the apartment next door, her head and Professor Bhaer's bending close together as they studied German fairy tales and poems, with him tucking in grammar lessons 'like pills in jelly', as she had written to her family. These were interesting times; sometimes frustrating ones too, as Jo couldn't decline all four cases of certain nouns and the verb tenses drove her wild. But on some days, such as today, they were content to simply read.

She loved to hear the Professor read aloud. He had a beautiful, resonant voice, and he always took such care with every word he read. And no wonder, for the book of poems he held in his big hands was a piece of his lost home.

He turned the page, and at the sight of the title and first line, Jo's eyes lit up.

"Mignon! I know this! At home we sing it around the piano of an evening, it's one of my favorites … why, now I shall find out what it actually means!" she couldn't help exclaiming, making the Professor smile at her enthusiasm.

"Very good, Miss March. Shall you read, and I explain if you do not understand something?"

"All right." She plunged in, tripping over the umlauts and the hard ch's as usual ("Confounded things! How do you people keep your tongues from going in knots?") and when she got past the first verse, she looked up and smiled wryly.

"Rather maudlin, isn't it?"

He grimaced. "Maudlin? I know not that word."

"Oh, excuse me. I only meant … it's a little too flowery. Lemon trees, shining oranges, myrtle and laurel … don't Germans use myrtle to crown brides? – and then this girl asks her lover to come with her to this magical country. It's very pretty, but … not what I usually like to read."

Jo had no patience for what she called 'lovering', at least in real life; and not too much in literature either.

"Try the other verses," was all the Professor said, his expression unreadable..

She continued – and found that he was right. The second verse painted a picture of the girl wandering through a gorgous palace, whose paintings and marble statues watched her with their eyes and spoke to her:

"Was hat man dir, du armes Kind, getan?"

The sentence fell heavily from Jo's lips, as if loaded with untold echoes. She stared at it for a moment, puzzling it out (Getan is a form of 'to do', no? Past perfect, combined with 'have'?) and when it became clear, it made her uneasy. The vagueness of it disturbed her – it must have been something terrible. She thought of Beth, playing her piano in a deserted part of the Laurence mansion, watched by the anxious eyes of a row of portraits. This was not a lovering poem. At least, not only that.

"What have they done to you, you poor child?" she translated softly.

"What have they done, Professor?"

Mr. Bhaer sighed and leaned his elbows on the desk. He looked up at Jo and held out his hands, looking awkward, as he always did when trying to explain something which stretched the capacity of his English.

"Mignon is a figure from a story," he said. "Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, from Goethe. He wrote this song." He tapped the page with one finger.

"Mignon is … she is very unhappy. She has a Sehnsucht … how do you say? … a great longing to go to Italy, where the oranges and marble buildings are. Italy is her home. She was taken away by traveling players when she was very small. That is what they have done to her. Take her away from Father and Mother."

That reminded her of her own family, miles away, sitting by the fire. Mother mending their clothes or knitting something to give to charity, Father reading his philosophical tomes, Beth at the piano, Meg and John at the Dovecote with their babies, even Amy flourishing away on the other side of the ocean … she could see them as clearly as if they were right before her eyes.

From the way the Professor was touching the paper, Jo remembered with a pang of sympathy that he had left his home behind as well.

"What happened to her?" she asked. "To Mignon?"

"She was … found … by the hero of the book, Wilhelm Meister. She loved him much. But he married with … another woman, and so Mignon died of her longing."

The Professor's eyes were very sad as he spoke, his voice dropping low, his accent heavy as a thick blanket on every word. Jo wondered if he was thinking of someone else, besides the fictional character. Had he ever loved and lost someone?

With a chill, she remembered that he had. His nephews, Franz and Emil, the same rampant boys Kitty and Minnie played with every day, were the orphaned children of the Professor's late sister. If he'd felt about her the way Jo felt about Beth … how could he endure it?

Mr. Bhaer really was an extraordinary man. He had a smile for everybody he met, romped with children and philosophized with adults, radiating kindness like a hearthfire does its warmth, undimmed even by such a sorrow as his sister's death and the loss of his home. He was everybody's comfort … but who would comfort him?

Impulsive Jo almost put her arm around him right there at the desk. Only the sheer impropriety of such an action stopped her; the very idea made her cheeks burn. He glanced at her quizzically, which made the blush even worse.

"Well, then," she said briskly, "I see. How interesting. I suppose Father wouldn't let us sing this if he knew. He's a minister, you know, and very particular about what we read."

"Goethe is not always proper in a minister's eyes," the Professor remarked drily. "I hope you are not offended, Miss March?"

"No. Indeed not." The blush was not going away. If Mr. Bhaer knew that this minister's daughter wrote about duels, murders and elopements on a regular basis, he wouldn't worry about this little poem. Part of her even wanted to know exactly how Mignon died – suicide? Illness? But she restrained herself, deciding that if she ever put this in a story, she would invent her own dramatic cause of death.

"Nun, Fräulein," he said, smiling reassuringly, as he knew how much she hated this part of the lesson. "Sprechen Sie deutsch mit mir. Was halten Sie von diesem Gedicht?"

Now, Miss, speak to me in German. What do you think of this poem?

Jo screwed up her face. The professor maintained firmly that the best way to learn a new language was to speak it, and he was perfectly right, but it was embarrassing. Every instinct screamed at her to speak English, where she could at least make herself understood if she couldn't be ladylike, rather than plunge into the choppy waters of a language with four noun cases and three genders.

"Ich magen es sehr," she said haltingly. "Es sein sehr schön. Und traurig."

I like it very much. It is very beautiful and sad.

"Das waren zwei Fehler," he pointed out gently. "Erraten Sie, wo."

Those were two mistakes. Guess where.

"Those bothersome verbs, I'm sure," she groaned. "Er … ich mag es sehr?"

"Richtig!" He beamed.

They went on in this fashion for quite a while, only stopping to light the lamp when it grew dark, forgetting time and space during Jo's wrestling match with German. She empathized with the Professor more than ever; surrounded by English as he was, he had to put up with this sort of headache every day of his life.

Sooner or later, however, with a glance at the clock on the mantelpiece, Mr. Bhaer shut the book with a firm thud and pushed it away.

"Enough, Miss March. This is very pleasing, but we must not tire ourselves for tomorrow. We have naughty children to attend."

The reminder made Jo laugh even as she rolled her eyes. Kitty and Minnie had her run off her feet, and the boys were even more active. But since tomorrow was Thursday, Jo and Mr. Bhaer could take all five children, including Tina, walking in the park like a large family, which was always nice.

Still eyeing the pook of poetry, she stood up.

"May I borrow that, sir?"

"Certainly." He smiled a little, handing her the worn-out volume with careful hands. "But have a care. It belonged to my sister Minna."

Minna. So that was her name, God rest her soul.

Jo felt a sudden uprising of fierce affection for this man, with his beautiful voice and even more beautiful soul. She took the book and, before he could withdraw his hand, caught it in hers. The contact sent a sudden spark rushing through her; it was unlike any touch she had ever known.

She looked into his dark eyes, level with hers, and gathered her words.

"Ich danke Ihnen, Professor, für … alles."

Thank you, Professor, for … everything.

She couldn't say what she meant – the lessons, the stories and poems, the shared laughter; the honest critique of her writing which helped her improve; the night of the dinner party where he had blazed up to defend his core beliefs against a bar of opposition; the kindness he showed to Jo herself and every resident of the house, from the wealthy Miss Norton down to the French laundress and her daughter.

She couldn't have expressed it in English either, everything he meant to her. She hoped he would see it in her eyes.

From the way his own eyes lit up, she knew he did.

"Gern geschehen, mein Fräulein."

You're welcome.