Part 12

They went on talking. It was just like one of those conversations they had had so often during the last few years. It began lightly and flippantly, and eventually finished in a blaze of tender lies which were true for just one moment. George was once again fascinated by Sissy.

"I would really prefer to go travelling with you," he whispered quite near her.

She just nodded. Her left arm rested on the broad back of the ottoman. "If one could only do as one wanted," she said, with a look that dreamt of a hundred men.

He bent down over her trembling arm, went on speaking and became intoxicated with his own words. "Somewhere where nobody knows us, where nobody bothers about any one, that is where I should like to be with you, Sissy, many days and nights."

Sissy shuddered. The word "nights" made her shudder with fear.

Anna appeared in the doorway, signalled to George with a look and then disappeared again. He felt an inward sense of reluctance, and yet he felt that this was just the psychological moment to leave Sissy.

In the doorway of the drawing-room he met Heinrich, who accosted him. "If you are going you might tell me, I should like to speak to you."

"Delighted! But I must ... promised to see Fräulein Rosner home, you see. I'll come straight to the café, so till then...."

A few minutes later he was standing on the Schwarzenberg bridge. The sky was full of stars, the streets stretched out wide and silent. George turned up his coat collar, although it was no longer cold, and walked up and down. Will anything come of the Detmold business? he thought. Oh well, if it is not in Detmold it will be in some town or other. At any rate I mean real business now, and a great deal, a great deal will then lie behind me.

He tried to consider the matter quietly. How will it all turn out? We are now at the end of December. We must go away in March--at the latest. We shall be taken for a honeymoon couple. I shall go walking with her arm-in-arm in Rome and Posilippo, in Venice.... There are women who grow very ugly in that condition ... but not she, no, not she.... There was always a certain touch of the mother in her appearance.... She must stay the summer in some quiet neighbourhood where no one knows her ... in the Thuringian Forest perhaps, or by the Rhine.... How strangely she said that to-day. The house in which the child will come into the world is already in existence. Yes.... Somewhere in the distance, or perhaps quite near here, that house is standing.... And people are living there whom we have never seen. How strange.... When will it come into the world? At the end of the summer, about the beginning of September. By that time, too, I am bound to have gone away. How shall I manage it?... And a year from to-day the little creature will be already four months old. It will grow up ... become big. There will be a young man there one fine day, my son, or a young girl; a beautiful little girl of seven, my daughter.... I shall be forty-four then.... When I am sixty-four I can be a grandfather ... perhaps a director of an opera or two and a celebrated composer in spite of Else's prophecies; but one has got to work for that, that is quite true. More than I have done so far. Else is right, I let myself go too much, I must be different ... I shall too. I feel a change taking place within me. Yes, something new is taking place within me also.

A fly came out of the Heugasse, some one bent out of the window. George recognised Anna's face under the white shawl. He was very glad, got in and kissed her hand. They enjoyed their talk, joked a little about the party from which she had just come and found it really ridiculous to spend an evening in so inept a fashion. He held her hands in his and was affected by her presence. He got out in front of her house and rung. He then came to the open door of the carriage and they arranged an appointment for the following day.

"I think we have got a lot to talk about," said Anna.

He simply nodded. The door of the house was open. She got out of the fly, gave George a long look full of emotion and disappeared into the hall.

My love! thought George, with a feeling of happiness and pride. Life lay before him like something serious and mysterious, full of gifts and full of miracles.

When he went into the café, Heinrich was sitting in a window niche. Next to him was a pale young beardless man whom George had casually spoken to several times, in a dinner-jacket with a velvet collar but with a shirt-front of doubtful cleanliness.

When George came in the young man looked up with ardent eyes from a paper that he was holding in his restless and not very well-kept hands.

"Am I disturbing you?" said George.

"Oh, not a bit of it," replied the young man, with a crazy laugh, "the larger the audience the better."

"Herr Winternitz," explained Heinrich, as he shook hands with George, "was just reading me a series of his poems, but we will break off now." Slightly touched by the disappointed expression of the young man George assured him that he would be delighted to hear the poems if he might be permitted to do so.

"It won't last much longer," explained Winternitz gratefully. "It is only a pity that you missed the beginning. I could----"

"What! Does it all hang together?" said Heinrich in astonishment.

"What, didn't you notice?" exclaimed Winternitz, and laughed again crazily.

"I see," said Heinrich. "So it's always the same woman character whom your poems deal with. I thought it was always a different one."

"Of course it is always the same one, but her special characteristic is that she always seems to be a fresh person."

Herr Winternitz read softly but insistently, as though inwardly consumed. It appeared from his series that he had been loved as never a man had been loved before, but also deceived as never a man had been deceived before, a circumstance which was to be attributed to certain metaphysical causes and not at all to any deficiencies in his own personality. He showed himself, however, in his last poem completely freed of his passion, and declared that he was now ready to enjoy all the pleasures, which the world could offer him. This poem had four stanzas; the last verse of every stanza began with a "hei," and it concluded with the exclamation: "Hei, so career I through the world."

George could not help recognising that the recitation had to a certain extent impressed him, and when Winternitz put the book down and looked around him with dilated pupils, George nodded appreciatively and said: "Very beautiful!"

Winternitz looked expectantly at Heinrich, who was silent for a few seconds and finally remarked: "It is fairly interesting on the whole ... but why do you say 'hei,' if it isn't a rude question? Positively, no one will believe it."

"What do you mean?" exclaimed Winternitz.

"Rather ask your own conscience, if you honestly mean that 'hei.' I believe all the rest which you read to me, I mean I believe it in the highest sense of the term, although not a single word is true. I believe you when you tell me that you have been seducing a girl of fifteen, that you have been behaving like a hardened Don Juan, that you have been corrupting the poor creature in the most dreadful way. That she deceived you with ... what was it now?..."

"A clown, of course," exclaimed Winternitz, with a mad laugh.

"That a clown was the man she deceived you with, that on account of that creature you had adventures which grew more and more sinister, that you wanted to kill your mistress and yourself as well, and that finally you get fed up with the whole business and go travelling about the world, or even careering as far as Australia for all I care: yes, I can believe all that, but that you are the kind of man to cry out 'hei,' that, my dear Winternitz, is a rank swindle."

Winternitz defended himself. He swore that this 'hei' had come from his most inward being, or at any rate from a certain element in his most inward being. When Heinrich made further objections, he gradually became more and more reserved, and finally declared that some time or other he hoped to win his way to that inward freedom where he would be allowed to cry out "hei."

"That time will never come," replied Heinrich positively. "You may perhaps get some time to the epic or the dramatic 'hei,' but the lyrical or subjective 'hei' will remain, my dear Winternitz, a closed book to people like you and me for all eternity."

Winternitz promised to alter the last poem, to make a point of continuing his development and to work at his inward purification.

He stood up, a proceeding which caused his starched shirt front to crack and a stud to break, held out his somewhat clammy hand to Heinrich and George, and went off to the literary men's table at the back.

George expressed discreet appreciation of the poems which he had heard.

"I like him the best of the whole set, at any rate personally," said Heinrich. "He at least has the good sense to maintain with me a certain mutual reserve in really intimate matters. Yes, you need not look at me again as though you were catching me in an attack of megalomania, but I can assure you, George, I have had nearly enough of the sort of people" (he swept the further table with a cursory glance) "who have always got an 'ä soi' on their lips."

"What is always on their lips?"

Heinrich smiled. "You must know the story of the Polish Jew who was sitting in a railway compartment with an unknown man and behaved very conventionally--until he realised by some remark of the other's that he was a Jew too, and on the strength of it immediately proceeded to stretch out his legs on the seat opposite with an 'ä soi' of relief."

"Quite good," said George.

"It is more than that," explained Heinrich sternly, "it is deep; like so many other Jewish stories it gives a bird's-eye view into the tragi-comedy of present-day Judaism. It expresses the eternal truth that no Jew has any real respect for his fellow Jew, never. As little as prisoners in a hostile country have any real respect for each other, particularly when they are hopeless. Envy, hate, yes frequently, admiration, even love; all that there can be between them, but never respect, for the play of all their emotional life takes place in an atmosphere of familiarity, so to speak, in which respect cannot help being stifled."

"Do you know what I think?" remarked George. "That you are a more bitter Anti-Semite than most of the Christians I know."

"Do you think so?" he laughed; "but not a real one. Only the man who is really angry at the bottom of his heart at the Jews' good qualities and does everything he can to bring about the further development of their bad ones is a real Anti-Semite. But you are right up to a certain point, but I must finish by confessing that I am also an Anti-Aryan. Every race as such is naturally repulsive, only the individual manages at times to reconcile himself to the repulsive elements in his race by reason of his own personal qualities. But I will not deny that I am particularly sensitive to the faults of Jews. Probably the only reason is that I, like all others--we Jews, I mean--have been systematically educated up to this sensitiveness. We have been egged on from our youth to look upon Jewish peculiarities as particularly grotesque or repulsive, though we have not been so with regard to the equally grotesque and repulsive peculiarities of other people. I will not disguise it--if a Jew shows bad form in my presence, or behaves in a ridiculous manner, I have often so painful a sensation that I should like to sink into the earth. It is like a kind of shame that perhaps is akin to the shame of a brother who sees his sister undressing. Perhaps the whole thing is egoism too. One gets embittered at being always made responsible for other people's faults, and always being made to pay the penalty for every crime, for every lapse from good taste, for every indiscretion for which every Jew is responsible throughout the whole world. That of course easily makes one unjust, but those are touches of nervousness and sensitiveness, nothing more. Then one pulls oneself together again. That cannot be called Anti-Semitism. But there are Jews whom I really hate, hate as Jews. Those are the people who act before others, and often before themselves, as though they did not belong to the rest at all. The men who try to offer themselves to their enemies and despisers in the most cowardly and cringing fashion, and think that in that way they can escape from the eternal curse whose burden is upon them, or from what they feel is equivalent to a curse. There are of course always Jews like that who go about with the consciousness of their extreme personal meanness, and consequently, consciously or unconsciously, would like to make their race responsible. Of course that does not help them the least bit. What has ever helped the Jews? the good ones and the bad ones. I mean, of course," he hastily added, "those who need something in the way of material or moral help." And then he broke off in a deliberately flippant tone: "Yes, my dear George, the situation is somewhat complicated and it is quite natural that every one who is not directly concerned with the question should not be able to understand it properly."

"No, you really should not...."

Heinrich interrupted him quickly. "Yes, I should, my dear George, that is just how it is. You don't understand us, you see. Many perhaps get an inkling, but understand? no. At any rate we understand you much better than you do us. Although you shake your head! Do we not deserve to? We have found it more necessary, you see, to learn to understand you than you did to learn to understand us. This gift of understanding was forced to develop itself in the course of time ... according to the laws of the struggle for existence if you like. Just consider, if one is going to find one's way about in a foreign country, or, as I said before, in an enemy's country, to be ready for all the dangers and ambushes which lurk there, it is obvious that the primary essential is to get to know one's enemies as well as possible--both their good qualities and their bad."

"So you live among enemies? Among foreigners! You would not admit as much to Leo Golowski. I don't agree with him either, not a bit of it. But how strangely inconsistent you are when you----"

Heinrich interrupted him, genuinely pained. "I have already told you the problem is far too complicated to be really solved. To find a subjective solution is almost impossible. A verbal solution even more so. Why, at times one might believe that things are not so bad. Sometimes one really is at home in spite of everything, feels one is as much at home here--yes, even more at home--than any of your so-called natives can ever feel. It is quite clear that the feeling of strangeness is to some extent cured by the consciousness of understanding. Why, it becomes, as it were, steeped in pride, condescension, tenderness; becomes dissolved--sometimes, of course, in sentimentalism, which is again a bad business."

He sat there with deep furrows in his forehead and looked in front of him.

"Does he really understand me better?" thought George, "than I do him, or is it simply another piece of megalomania...?"

Heinrich suddenly started as though emerging from a dream. He looked at his watch. "Half-past two! And my train goes at eight to-morrow."

"What, you are going away?"

"Yes, that is what I wanted to speak to you about so much. I shall have to say goodbye to you for a goodish time, I'm sorry to say. I am going to Prague. I am taking my father away, out of the asylum home to our own house."

"Is he better, then?"

"No, but he is in that stage when he is not dangerous to those near him.... Yes, that came quite quickly too."

"And about when do you think you will be back?"

Heinrich shook his shoulders. "I can't tell to-day, but however the thing develops, I certainly cannot leave my mother and sisters alone now."

George felt a genuine regret at being deprived of Heinrich's society in the near future. "It's possible that you won't find me in Vienna again when you come back. I shall probably go away this spring, you see." And he almost felt a desire to take Heinrich into his confidence.

"I suppose you are travelling south?" asked Heinrich.

"Yes, I think so. To enjoy my freedom once again, just for a few months. Serious life begins next autumn, you see. I am looking out for a position in Germany at some theatre or other."

"Really?"

The waiter came to the table. They paid and went.

They met Rapp and Gleissner together in the doorway. They exchanged a few words of greeting.

"And what have you been doing all this time, Herr Rapp?" asked George courteously.

Rapp took off his pince-nez. "Oh, my melancholy old job all the time. I am engaged in demonstrating the vanity of vanities."

"You might make a change, Rapp," said Heinrich. "Try your luck for once and praise the splendour of splendours."

"What is the point?" said Rapp, and put on his glasses.

"That will prove itself in the course of time. But as a rule rotten work only keeps alive during its good fortune and its fame, and when the world at last realises the swindle, it has either been in the grave for a long time or has taken refuge in its presumable immortality."

They were now in the street and all turned up their coat collars, since it had begun again to snow violently.

Gleissner, who had had his first great dramatic success a few weeks ago, quickly told them that the seventh performance of his work, which had taken place to-day, had also been sold out.

Rapp used that as a peg on which to hang malicious observations on the stupidity of the public. Gleissner answered with gibes at the impotence of the critic when confronted with true genius--and so they walked away through the snow with turned-up collar, quite enveloped in the steaming hate of their old friendship.

"That Rapp has no luck," said Heinrich to George. "He'll never forgive Gleissner for not disappointing him."

"Do you consider him so jealous?"

"I wouldn't go as far as that. Matters are rarely sufficiently simple to be disposed of in a single word. But just think what a fate it is to go about the world in the belief that you carry with you as deep a knowledge of it as Shakespeare had, and to feel at the same time that you aren't able to express as much of it as, for instance, Herr Gleissner, although perhaps one is quite as much good as he is--or even more."

They walked on together for a time in silence. The trees in the Ring were standing motionless with their white branches. It struck three from the tower of the Rathaus. They walked over the empty streets and took the way through the silent park. All around them the continuous fall of snow made everything shine almost brightly.

"By the way, I have not told you the latest news," started Heinrich suddenly, looking in front of him and speaking in a dry tone.

"What is it?"

"That I have been receiving anonymous letters for some time."

"Anonymous letters? What are the contents?"

"Oh, you can guess."

"I see." It was clear to George that it could only be something about the actress. Heinrich had returned in greater anguish than ever from the foreign town, where he had seen his mistress act the part of a depraved creature in a new play, with a truth and realism which he found positively intolerable. George knew that he and she had since then been exchanging letters full of tenderness and scorn, full of anger and forgiveness, full of broken anguish and laboured confidence.

"The delightful messages," explained Heinrich, "have been coming along every morning for eight days. Not very pleasant, I can assure you."

"Good gracious, what do they matter to you? You know yourself anonymous letters never contain the truth."

"On the contrary, my dear George, they always do, but letters like that always contain a kind of higher truth, the great truth of possibilities. Men haven't usually got sufficient imagination to create things out of nothing."

"That is a charming way of looking at things. Where should we all get to, then? It makes things a bit too easy for libellers of all kinds."

"Why do you say libellers? I regard it as highly improbable that there are any libels contained in the anonymous letters which I have been receiving. No doubt exaggerations, embellishments, inaccuracies...."

"Lies."

"No, I am sure they are not lies; some, no doubt, but in a case like this how is one to separate the truth from the lies?"

"There is a very simple way of dealing with that. You go there."

"Me go there?"

"Yes, of course that is what you ought to do. When you are on the spot you are bound to get at once to the real truth."

"It would certainly be possible."

They were walking under arcades on the wet stone. Their voices and steps echoed. George began again. "Instead of going on being demoralised with all this annoyance, I should try and convince myself personally as to how matters stood."

"Yes, that would certainly be the soundest thing to do."

"Well, why don't you do it?"

Heinrich remained stationary and jerked out with clenched teeth: "Tell me, my dear George, have you not really noticed that I am a coward?"

"Nonsense, one doesn't call that being a coward."

"Call it whatever you like. Words never hit things off exactly. The more precisely they pretend to do so the less they really do. I know what I am. I would not go there for anything in the world. To make a fool of myself once more, no, no, no...."

"Well, what will you do?"

Heinrich shook his shoulders as though the matter really did not concern him.

Somewhat irritated, George went on questioning him. "If you will allow me to make a remark, what does the ... lady chiefly concerned have to say?"

"The lady who is chiefly concerned, as you call her, with a wit, which though unconscious is positively infernal, does not know for the time being anything about my getting anonymous letters."

"Have you left off corresponding with her?"

"What an idea! We write daily to each other as we did before. She the most tender and lying letters, I the meanest you can possibly imagine--disingenuous, reserved letters, that torture me to the quick."

"Look here, Heinrich, you are really not a very noble character."

Heinrich laughed out loud. "No, I am not noble. I clearly was not born to be that."

"And when one thinks that after all these are sheer libels----" George for his part had of course no doubt that the anonymous letters contained the truth. In spite of that he was honestly desirous that Heinrich should travel to the actual spot, convince himself, do something definite, box somebody's ears or shoot somebody down. He imagined Felician in a similar position, or Stanzides or Willy Eissler. All of them would have taken it better or in a different way, one for which he certainly could have felt more sympathy. Suddenly the question ran through his brain as to what he would probably do, if Anna were to deceive him. Anna deceive him ... was that really possible? He thought of her look that evening, that dark questioning look which she had sent over to Demeter Stanzides. No, that did not signify anything, he was sure of it, and the old episodes with Leo and the singing-master, they were harmless, almost childish. But he thought of something that was different and perhaps more significant--a strange question which she had put to him the other day when she had stayed unduly late in his company and had had to hurry off home with an excuse. Was he not afraid, she had asked him, to have it on his conscience that he was making her into a liar? It had rung half like a reproach and half like a warning, and if she herself was so little sure of herself could he trust her implicitly? Did he not love her? He ... and did he not deceive her in spite of it, or was ready to do so at any moment, which, after all, came to the same thing?