For the boy’s parents, to avoid paying alimony or being personally involved in any further scandal—I must point out that I know nothing about the laws of their state nor anything about their personal circumstances—to avoid the scandal, then, and the payment of alimony, they packed off their son, my dear nephew, to America, shamefully unprovided-for, as you can see, and the poor lad, despite the signs and wonders which still happen in America if nowhere else, would have come to a wretched end in some back alley of New York, being thrown entirely on his own resources, if this servant girl hadn’t written a letter to me, which after long delays reached me the day before yesterday, giving me the whole story, along with a description of my nephew and, very wisely, the name of the ship as well. If I were setting out to entertain you, gentlemen, I could read a few passages to you from this letter”—he pulled out and flourished before them two huge, closely written sheets of letter paper. “You would certainly be impressed, for the letter is written with somewhat simple but well-intended cunning and with much loving concern for the father of the child. But I have no intention either of entertaining you for longer than my explanation needs, or of wounding at the very start the perhaps still sensitive feelings of my nephew, who, if he likes, can read the letter for his own instruction in the seclusion of the room already waiting for him.”

But Karl had no feelings for that girl. Hemmed in by an ever-receding past, she sat in her kitchen beside the counter, resting her elbows on top of it. She looked at him whenever he came to the kitchen to get a glass of water for his father or do some errand for his mother. Sometimes, awkwardly sitting sideways at the counter, she would write a letter, drawing her inspiration from Karl’s face. Sometimes she would sit with one hand over her eyes, impervious to anything that was said to her. Sometimes she would kneel in her tiny room next to the kitchen and pray to a wooden crucifix; then Karl would feel shy if he passed by and caught a glimpse of her through the crack of the slightly open door. Sometimes she would race around the kitchen and jump back, laughing like a witch, if Karl got in her way. Sometimes she would shut the kitchen door after Karl entered and hold it shut until he had to beg to be let out. Sometimes she would bring him things he did not even want and press them silently into his hand. And once she called him “Karl” and led him, dumbfounded at this unusual familiarity, into her tiny room, sighing and grimacing, and locked the door. Then she flung her arms around his neck, almost choking him, and while urging him to take off her clothes, she was actually taking off his and laid him on her bed, as if she would never give him up to anyone else and would caress and care for him to the end of time. “Oh Karl, my Karl!” she cried; it was as if her eyes were devouring him, while his eyes saw nothing at all and he felt uncomfortable in all the warm bedclothes which she seemed to have piled up for him alone. Then she lay down by him and wanted some secrets from him, but he could tell her none, and she got angry, either in jest or in earnest, shook him, listened to his heart, offered her breast that he might listen to hers in turn, but could not get him to do it, pressed her naked belly against his body, felt with her hand between his legs, so disgustingly that his head and neck started up from the pillows, then thrust her body several times against him—it felt as if she were a part of himself, and for that reason perhaps he was seized by a terrible feeling of need. With tears running down his cheeks he reached his own bed at last, after many entreaties from her to come again. That was all that had happened, and yet his uncle had managed to make a big issue out of it. And so the cook had also been thinking about him and had informed his uncle of his arrival. That had been very good of her and some day he would repay her for it, if he could.

“And now,” cried the Senator, “I want you to tell me openly whether I am your uncle or not?”

“You are my uncle,” said Karl, kissing his hand and receiving a kiss on the brow. “I’m very glad to have found you, but you’re mistaken if you think my father and mother never speak kindly of you. And besides that, you’ve got some points quite wrong in your speech; what I mean to say is that it didn’t all happen like that in reality. But you can’t really be expected to understand these things at such a distance, and I also think it won’t do any great harm if these gentlemen are somewhat incorrectly informed about the details of something which really can’t be of much interest to them.”

“Well spoken,” said the Senator, leading Karl up to the Captain, who was clearly sympathetic, and asking, “Haven’t I got a splendid nephew?”

“I am delighted,” said the Captain, making the sort of bow which only those trained in the military can carry off, “to have met your nephew, Senator. My ship is honored to have provided the setting for such a reunion. Undoubtedly, the voyage in steerage must have been very unpleasant, but how are we to know who might be traveling with us down below? We do everything possible to make conditions tolerable, far more, for instance, than the American lines do, but to turn such a passage into a pleasure cruise is more than we’ve been able to manage yet.”

“It did me no harm,” said Karl.

“It did him no harm!” repeated the Senator, laughing loudly.

“Except that I’m afraid I’ve lost my …” and with that he remembered all that had happened and all that remained to be done, and he looked around him and saw the others still in their same places, silent with respect and surprise, their eyes fixed upon him. Only the harbor officials, so far as one could tell from their stern and self-satisfied faces, betrayed some regret at having come at such an unpropitious time, and the pocket watch they had laid on the table before them was probably more important to them than everything that had happened or might still happen there in that room.

The first to express his sympathy, after the Captain, was curiously enough the stoker. “I congratulate you heartily,” he said, and shook Karl’s hand in a way that was also meant to express something like gratitude. Yet when he turned to the Senator with the same words the Senator drew back, as if the stoker were exceeding his rights; and the stoker immediately desisted.

But the others now saw what was expected of them and at once pressed in a confused throng around Karl and the Senator. And so it happened that Karl even received Schubal’s congratulations, accepted them and thanked him for them. The last to advance in the ensuing lull were the harbor officials who spoke a few words in English, which made a comical impression.

The Senator was now perfectly in the mood to extract the last ounce of enjoyment from the situation by refreshing his own and the others’ minds with some less important details, and this was not merely tolerated but of course welcomed with interest by everyone.