Chapter 42

As if an invisible slanderer were at his side, unwilling to leave him, leave him in peace, his despair increased. “What have you done, Daniel!” a voice within him cried, “what have you done!” The shades of the sisters, arm in arm, arose before him.

The feeling of having made a mistake, a mistake that could never be rectified, burned like fire within him. His work, so nearly completed, had suddenly died away.

For the sake of his symphony, he forced himself into a quiet frame of mind at night, made room for faint-hearted hopes, and lulled his presentient soul into peace.

The thing that troubled him worst of all was the way Philippina looked at him.

Since the birth of the child he had been living in Eleanore’s room. Old Jordan was consideration itself: he went around in his stocking feet so as not to disturb him.

One night Daniel took the candle, and went downstairs to Dorothea’s room. She woke up, screamed, looked at him bewildered, recognised him, became indignant, and then laughed mockingly and sensually.

He sat down on the side of her bed, and took her right hand between his two. But he had a disagreeable sensation on feeling her hand in his, and looked at her fingers. They were not finely formed: they were thicker at the ends than in the middle; they could not remain quiet; they twitched constantly.

“This can’t keep up, Dorothea,” he said in a kindly tone, “you are ruining your own life and mine too. Why do you have all these people around you? Is the pleasure you derive from associating with them so great that it benumbs your conscience? I have no idea what you are doing. Tell me about it. The household affairs are in a wretched condition; everything is in disorder. And that cigar smoke out in the living room! I opened a window. And your child! It has no mother. Look at its little face, and see how pale and sickly it looks!”

“Well, I can’t help it; Philippina puts poppy in the milk so that it will sleep longer,” Dorothea answered, after the fashion of guilty women: of the various reproaches Daniel had cast at her, she seized upon the one of which she felt the least guilty. But after this, Daniel had no more to say.

“I am so tired and sleepy,” said Dorothea, and again blinked at him out of one corner of her eye with that mocking, sensual look. As he showed no inclination to leave, she yawned, and continued in an angry tone: “Why do you wake a person up in the middle of the night, if all you want is to scold them? Get out of here, you loathsome thing!”

She turned her back on him, and rested her head on her hand. Opposite her bed was a mirror in a gold frame. She saw herself in it; she was pleased with herself lying there in that offended mood, and she smiled.

Daniel, who had been so cruel to noble women now become shades, saw how she smiled at herself, infatuated with herself: he took pity on such child-like vanity.

“There is a Chinese fairy tale about a Princess,” he said, and bent down over Dorothea, “who received from her mother as a wedding present a set of jewel boxes. There was a costly present in each box, but the last, smallest, innermost one was locked, and the Princess had to promise that she would never open it. She kept her promise for a while, but curiosity at last got the better of her, she forgot her vow, and opened the last little box by force. There was a mirror in it; and when she looked into it and saw how beautiful she was, she began to abuse her husband. She tortured him so that he killed her one day.”

Dorothea looked at him terrified. Then she laughed and said: “What a stupid story! Such a tale of horror!” She laid her cheek on the pillow, and again looked in the mirror.

The following morning Daniel received an anonymous letter. It read as follows: “You will be guarding your own honour if you keep a sharp lookout on your wife. A Well-wisher.”

A cold fever came over him. For a few days he dragged his body from room to room as if poisoned. He avoided every one in the house. One night he again felt a desire to go down to Dorothea. When he reached the door to her room, he found it bolted. He knocked, but received no answer. He knocked again, this time more vigorously. He heard her turn her head on the pillow. “Let me sleep!” cried Dorothea angrily.

“Open the door, Dorothea,” he begged.

“No, I will not; I want to sleep.” These were the words that reached his ear from behind the bolted door.

He pressed three or four times on the latch, implored her three or four times to let him come in, but received no answer. He did not wish to make any more noise, looked straight ahead as if into a dark hole, and then turned and went back to his room in the attic.

XIII

Friedrich Benda was again in Europe. All the newspapers contained accounts of the discoveries made on the expedition. Last autumn Arab dealers in ivory had found him in the land of Niam-Niam, taken an interest in him, and finally brought him, then seemingly in the throes of imminent death, back to the Nile. In England he was celebrated as a hero and a bold pioneer; the Royal Geographical Society had made him an honorary member; and the incidents of his journey were the talk of the day.

Toward the close of April he came to Nuremberg to visit his mother. The blind old woman had been carefully and cautiously prepared for his coming. She nevertheless came very near dying with joy; her life was in grave danger for a while.

Benda had not wished to stay more than a week: his business and his work called him back to London; he had lectures to deliver, and he had to see a book through the press, a book in which he had given a description of the years spent in Africa.

At the urgent request of his mother he had decided to stay longer. Moreover, during the first days of his visit to Nuremberg, he suffered from a severe attack of a fever he had brought with him from the tropics, and this forced him to remain in bed. The news of his presence in the city finally became generally known, and he was annoyed by the curiosity of many people who had formerly never concerned themselves about him in the slightest.

He was eager to see Daniel; every hour of delay in meeting his old friend was an hour of reproach. But his mother insisted that he stay with her; he had to sit near her and tell of his experiences in Africa.

When he heard of the outer events in Daniel’s life he was filled with terror. The fact that made the profoundest impression on him was Daniel’s marriage to Dorothea Döderlein. People told him a great many things about their life and how they were getting along, and with each passing day he felt that it would be more difficult to go to Daniel. One evening he got his courage together and decided to go. He got as far as Ægydius Place, when he was seized with such a feeling of sadness and discomfort at the thought of all the changes that time and fate had made that he turned back. He felt as if he might be deceived by a picture which would perhaps still show the features of Daniel as he looked in former years, but that he would be so changed inwardly that words would be unable to bring the two together.

He longed to talk with some one who loved Daniel and who had followed his career with pure motives. He had to think for a long while: where was there such a person? He thought of old Herold and went to him. He directed the conversation without digression to a point that was of prime importance to him. And in order to put the old man in as confidential a frame of mind as possible, he reminded him of a night when the three of them, Daniel, Herold, and Benda, had sat in the Mohren Cellar drinking wine and discussing things in general, important and unimportant, that have a direct bearing on life.

The old man nodded; he recalled the evening. He spoke of Daniel’s genius with a modesty and a deference that made Benda’s heart swell. He raised his finger, and said with a fine fire in his eye: “I’ll stand good for him. I prophesy on the word of the Bible: A star will rise from Jacob.”

Then he spoke of Eleanore; he was passionately fond of her. He told how she had brought him the quartette, and how she had glowed with inspiration and the desire to help. He also had a good deal to say about Gertrude, especially with regard to her mental breakdown and her death.

Benda left the old man at once quiet and disquieted. He walked along the street for a long while, rapt in thought. When he looked up he saw that he was standing before Daniel’s house. He went in.

XIV

Daniel knew that Benda had returned: Philippina had read it in the newspaper and told him about it. Dorothea, who had learned of his return from her father, had also spoken to him about it. He had also heard other people speak of it.

The first time he heard it he was startled. He felt he would have to flee to his friend of former days. Then he was seized with the same fear that had come over Benda: Is our relation to each other the same? The thought of meeting Benda filled him with a sense of shame, to which was added a touch of bitterness as day after day passed by and Benda never called or wrote. “It is all over,” he thought, “he has forgotten me.” He would have liked to forget too; and he could have done it, for his mind was wandering, restless, strayed.

One evening as he crossed the square he noticed that the windows of his house were all brilliantly lighted. He went to the kitchen, where he found Agnes at the table seeding plums.

“Who is here again?” he asked. One could hear laughter, loud and boisterous, in the living room.

Agnes, scarcely looking up, reeled off the names: Councillor Finkeldey, Herr von Ginsterberg, Herr Samuelsky, Herr Hahn, a strange man whose name she did not know, Frau Feistelmann and her sister.

Daniel remained silent for a while. Then he went up to Agnes, put his hand under her chin, lifted her head, and murmured: “And you? And you?”

Agnes frowned, and was afraid to look into his face. Suddenly she said: “To-day is the anniversary of mother’s death.” With that she looked at him fixedly.

“So?” said Daniel, sat down on the edge of the table, and laid his head in his hand. Some one was playing the piano in the living room. Since Daniel had taken the grand piano up to his room, Dorothea had rented a small one. The rhythmical movement of dancing couples could be heard quite distinctly.

“I’d like to leave this place,” said Agnes, as she threw a worm-eaten plum in the garbage can. “In Beckschlager Street there is a seamstress who wants to teach me to sew.”

“Why don’t you go?” asked Daniel. “It would be a very sensible thing to do. But what will Philippina say about it?”

“Oh, she doesn’t object, provided I spend my evenings and Sundays with her.”

The front door bell rang, and Agnes went out: there was some one to see Daniel. He hesitated, started toward the door, shook and stepped back, seized with trembling hand the kitchen lamp in order to make certain that he was not mistaken, for it was dark, but there could be no mistake. It was Benda.

They looked at each other in violent agitation. Benda was the first to reach out his hand; then Daniel reached out his. Something seemed to snap within him. He became dizzy, his tall, stiff body swung back and forth. Then he fell into the arms of his friend, whom he had lived without for seventeen years.

Benda was not prepared for such a scene; he was unable to speak. Then Daniel tore himself loose from the embrace of his old comrade, pushed the dishevelled hair back from his forehead, and said hastily: “Come upstairs with me; no one will disturb us up there.”

Daniel lighted the lamp in his room, and then looked around to see whether old Jordan was at home. Jordan’s room was dark. He closed the door and took a seat opposite Benda. He was breathing heavily.

What meaning can be attached to the preliminary questions and answers that invariably accompany such a meeting after such a long separation? “How are you? How long are you going to stay in town? You still have the same old habits of life? Tell me about yourself.” What do such questions mean? They mean virtually nothing. The protagonists thereby simply remove the rubbish from the channels which have been choked up in the course of years, and try to build new bridges carrying them over abysses that must be crossed if the conversation is to be connected and coherent.

Benda had grown somewhat stout. His face was brownish yellow, about the colour of leather. The deep wrinkles around his forehead and mouth told of the hardships he had gone through. His eye was completely changed: it had the strong, vivacious, and yet quiet appearance of the eye of a hunter or a peasant.

“You may well imagine that I have already told the story of my adventures in Africa a hundred times and in the same way,” said Benda. “It has all been written down, and will shortly appear in book form, where you can read it. It was an unbroken chain of toil and trouble. Frequently I was as close to death as I am to this wall. I devoured enough quinine to fill a freight car, and yet it was always the same old story, fever to-day, to-morrow, for six months in the year. I have, I fear, ruined my health; I am afraid my old heart will not last much longer. The eternal vigilance I was obliged to exercise, the incessant fight for so simple a thing as a path, or for more urgent things such as food and drink, has told on me. I suffered terribly from the sun; also from the rain. I had very few of the comforts of life; I was often forced to sleep on the ground. And there was no one to talk to, no sense of security.”

“And yet,” he continued, “I had my reward. When I look back on it all, there is not an hour that I would care to have wiped from my memory. I accomplished a great deal. I made some important discoveries, brought back enough work to keep me busy for years to come, thirty-six boxes of plant preparations, and this despite the fact that the entire fruit of my first seven years of effort was burned in a tent near Nembos. But apart from what I have actually done, there is something so real and solemn about such a life. You live with the sky above you and savages round about you. These savages are like children. This state of affairs is, to be sure, being rapidly changed: Europe is breathing its pest into the paradise. The wiles and weaknesses of these savages are in a way touching; you feel sorry for them as you feel sorry for a dumb, harassed beast. I had taken a boy along with me from the boundless, primeval forests north of the Congo. He was a little bit of a fellow, almost a dwarf. I liked him; I even loved him. And obedient! I merely had to make a sign, and he was ready. Well, we came back to the Italian lakes, where I wished to remain for a while for the sake of the climate before returning to England. What happened? At the sight of the snow-covered mountain peaks he was seized with deathly fear; he became homesick; and in a few days he died of pneumonia.”

“Why is it that there was such a long period that we never heard from you?” asked Daniel, with a timidity and shyness that made Benda’s heart ache.

“That is a long story,” said Benda. “It took me two years to get through that fearful forest and out to a lake called Albert-Nyanza. From there I wanted to get over to Egypt, but the country was in a state of revolution and was occupied by the soldiers of the Mahdi. I was forced to take the route to the Northwest, ran into a pathless wilderness, and for five years was a captive of a tribe of the Wadai. The Niam-Niam, who were at war with the Wadai, liberated me. I could move about with relative freedom among them, but I could not go beyond their boundaries, for they held me in high esteem as a medicine man and were afraid I would bewitch them if I ever got out of their personal control. I had lost my guides, and I had no money to hire new ones. The things I needed, because of the delicacy of my constitution, as compared with theirs, I secured through the chieftain from a band of Arabian merchants. This was all very well so far as it went, but the chieftain was careful to keep me concealed from the Arabs. I finally succeeded in coming into personal touch with a Sheik to whom I could make myself understood. It was high time, for I could not have stood it another year.”

Daniel was silent. It was all so strange; he could hardly adapt himself to Benda’s voice and manner. Memory failed him. The world of Benda was all too foreign, unknown to him. What he himself felt had no weight with his friend; it did not even have meaning. With the old sense of dim defiance, he coaxed the ghost of disappointment into his soul; and his soul was weighed down by the nocturnal darkness like the glass of his window.

“Now I am enjoying my home,” said Benda thoughtfully, “I am enjoying a milder light, a more ordered civilisation. I have come to look upon Germany as a definite figure, to love it as a composite picture. Nature, really great, grand nature such as formerly seemed beyond the reach of my longings, such as constituted my idea, my presentiment of perfection, I have experienced in person; I have lived it. It enticed me, taught me, and almost destroyed me. All human organisation, on the contrary, has developed more and more into an idea. In hours that were as full of the feeling of things as the heart is full of blood, I have seen the scales of the balance move up and down with the weight of two worlds. The loneliness, the night, the heavens at night, the forest, the desert have shown me their true faces. The terribleness that at times proceeds from them has no equal in any other condition of existence. I understood for the first time the law that binds families, peoples, states together. I have repudiated all thought of rebellion, and sworn to co-operate, to do nothing but co-operate.

“I want to make a confession to you,” he continued. “I never had the faintest conception of the rhythm of life until I went to Africa. I had known how long it takes to grow a tree; I was familiar with the metamorphoses through which a plant must pass before it attains to perfection and becomes what it is; but it had never occurred to me to apply these laws and facts to our own lives; this had never entered my mind. I had demanded too much; I had been in too much of a hurry. Egoistic impatience had placed false weights and measures in my hands. What I have learned during these seventeen years of trial and hardship is patience. Everything moves so slowly. Humanity is still a child, and yet we demand justice of it, expect right and righteous action from it. Justice? Oh, there is still a long, long road to be travelled before we reach Justice! The way is as long and arduous as that from the primeval forest to the cultivated garden. We must exercise patience—for the benefit of the many generations of men that are to come after us.”

Daniel got up and began to walk back and forth. After a silence that was exceedingly painful to Benda, he said: “Let’s go out. Let’s go to a café, or take a long walk on the streets, or go wherever you would like to go. Or if I am a burden to you, I will accompany you for a short stretch and then remain alone. The point is, I cannot stay here any longer; I cannot stand it here.”

“A burden to me?” replied Benda reproachfully. That was the tone, the look of years gone by. Daniel felt at once that he was personally under no obligation to talk. He saw at once that Benda knew a great deal and suspected the rest. He felt his heart grow lighter.

They went downstairs.

XV

Daniel asked Benda to wait on the stairs, locked the door, and took his hat from the hook. In the living room there was a great deal of noise punctuated with laughter. Philippina came out of her room, and snarled: “The way they’re carrying on in there! You’d think they wuz all drunk!”

“What is going on?” asked Daniel timidly, merely to have something to say.

“They are playing blindfold,” replied Philippina contemptuously, “every one of them is an old bird, and they’re playing blindfold!”

There was a sound as if a plate had been broken; a piercing scream followed, and then silence. But the silence was of momentary duration: that vulgar, slimy laughter soon broke out again.

Above the din of screaming voices, Daniel heard Dorothea’s. He hastened to the door and opened it.

His enraged eye fell on the table covered with pots, empty cups, and pastry. The chairs had been pushed to one side; the new gas chandelier with its five frosted globes was functioning at full force; there were seven or eight persons grouped around Dorothea, laughing and looking at something that had fallen on the floor.

Dorothea had pushed the white sash she had been wearing while playing blindfold back on her forehead. She was the first to see Daniel; she exclaimed: “There is my husband. Now don’t get angry, Daniel; it’s nothing but that idiotic plaster mask.”

Councillor Finkeldey, a white-bearded man, nodded at Daniel, or at least at the spot where he was standing, with marked enthusiasm. It was his way of paying homage to Dorothea: everything she said he accompanied with an inspired nod of approval.

Daniel saw that the mask of Zingarella had been broken to pieces.

Without greeting a single person present, without even looking at a single one of them, he stepped into the circle, knelt down, and tried to put the broken pieces of the mask together. But there were too many small shreds. The nose, the chin, parts of the glorious forehead, a piece with the mouth arched in sorrow, another piece of the cheek—there were too many; they could not be put together.

He hurled the fragments to one side, and straightened up. “Philippina! The broom!” His command was given in a loud tone. And when Philippina came in with the broom, he added: “Sweep the dirt up on a pile, and then throw it in the garbage can.”

Philippina swept up, while Daniel, as silent and unsocial on going as he had been on coming, left the room.

Frau Feistelmann made an indignant face, Edward Hahn breathed through his nose, Herr Samuelsky, a fat man with a red beard, made a contemptuous remark, Dorothea, vexed and annoyed, stood and looked on while the tears took their unrestrained course.

Benda had been waiting down at the front door. “She has broken my mask,” said Daniel with a distorted smile, as he came down to his old friend, “the mask you gave me. You remember! Strange that it should have been broken to-day of all days, the very day you come to see me after so long a separation.”

“Possibly it can be glued together again,” said Benda, trying to console Daniel.

“I am not in favour of glueing things together,” replied Daniel. His eyes flashed green behind his glasses.

XVI

When the guests left, Philippina came in and cleaned up the room. Dorothea sat on the sofa. Her hands were lying in her lap; she was unusually serious.

“Why don’t your American ever come to see us?” asked Philippina, without apparent motive.

Dorothea was terrified. “Lock the door, Philippina,” she whispered, “I have something to tell you.”

Philippina locked the door, and went over to the sofa. “The American has to see me,” continued Dorothea, as her eyes roamed about the room in timid waywardness. “He says he wants to talk to me about something that will be of very great importance to me the rest of my life. He is living in a hotel, but I can’t go to a hotel. It will not do to have him come here, nor do I wish to be seen on the street with him. He has suggested a place where we might meet, but I am afraid: I do not know the people. Can’t you help me out, Philippina? Don’t you know some one to whom we can go and in whose house we can meet?”