Part 16

“I will describe to you one case, one out of thousands. One case out of the thousands where the criminal goes unapprehended. I knew a family, a well-to-do and respected family, clever, kindly parents, who had four healthy, talented children—boys. The mother could not take care of the needs of four growing boys unassisted, besides it would not have been the proper thing to do, so they hired a maid for the lads. A half-educated person, as is customary, with an agreeable exterior, good references and all possible recommendations. This maid delighted in nothing more than to inform the boys of matters against which they had been carefully guarded. The unhappy children were thus completely under her thumb. They knew that they were doing forbidden things. They were tangled up in the terrible concept of ‘sin’ and prayed to God for succor. The infamous woman had an inexhaustible imagination and constantly invented new devices to whip up the resisting and jaded children. They became more and more miserable. Everything possible was done for them, they were sent to expensive baths—accompanied, of course, by their maid. From time to time, one of the boys would resolve to confess everything to his mother—but he got no farther than the resolve. Such things were too frightful to confess to the gentlest of mothers. Perhaps you can imagine what kind of ‘childhood’ such children enjoyed. Exhausted in body and soul, disinclined to play or work, in spite of their talents hardly able to pass through school, living in everlasting fear of discovery, of punishment, of sickness, of Hell—and never able to withstand their vices, slinking more and more like shadows through the days, living only in the perilous practices of the night.

“When the maid left to continue her work in another family, it was too late. Not one of the four recovered. One shot himself the night after his marriage. The second remained an unhappy monomaniac and after a complete nervous break-down had to be taken to a sanitarium. The two youngest turned their backs on everything that suggested Eros. One, an ascetic, took refuge in a monastery. The other dragged his way through a drab and joyless world, shrinking from all human companionship. The woman is probably an esteemed children’s maid to this very day, under whose prudent care more charges are being ruined.”

Nobody said anything. The darkness had slowly filled the whole room, leaving the windows hardly more than pale gray oblongs.

“Oh,” said Sophie. Myra seemed to hear her voice trembling with angry tears, and seemed to feel her clench her fist. “She ought to be hanged!”

“Then you’d have to hang a great many people,” said Eccarius quietly.

Again the heavy silence weighed on them.

There was a knock, somebody opened the door. A ray of light stabbed the darkness, a voice tore the silence.

“Here is the newspaper,” said the maid, stopping in surprise at the door. “Shall I turn on the lights, madame?”

“Yes, do, Martha.”

The light was like a trumpet blast. They all bowed their heads to escape its glare, knitting their brows and blinking their eyes.

None of them had the courage to look at the others. Sophie took the paper from the maid and began to read aloud, the most indifferent things in the world, things that could interest nobody. But all of them feigned interest, and everybody had something to say, so that a lively conversation ensued, made up entirely of trifling remarks.

Eccarius left before the conversation had died down again.

They continued to speak of various things after he was gone. But they seemed no longer able to sustain an affectedly frivolous conversation. Sophie had a saving idea. She proposed a game of scat so that they could sit together for a little longer and have something to occupy their minds.

But suddenly, in the middle of the game, she let the hand holding her cards sink to the table.

“He has one brother in the insane asylum,” she said as if she had been thinking of nothing else all the while.

“I know,” said Nora just as seriously. “And another in a monastery.”

XIV

When Myra reached home she was met in the hall by one of the maids who said—as it seemed to Myra, with an ambiguous and lewd smile—“Miss Werkenthin is waiting for Miss Rudloff.”

Myra felt her heart palpitate, as it had so often of late. She walked more slowly, not wishing to reach the door of her room too soon. She felt that she must have a few moments’ reprieve. But she felt, too, as if the maid had stopped, and she thought that mocking, spying glance was stabbing her back, between the shoulder blades. So she walked quicker.

It was cold outside, cold on the stairs, cold in the hall.

She had been so happy at the idea of her warm, quiet room, of the mild light of the lamp, of an hour in the easy-chair with a good book in her hand. Now her beloved room was quite filled with a strange presence, a cloud of opium and stupefying perfume would assail her, and she would not enjoy a quiet quarter of an hour that night.

Once more she would lie awake half the night with all her nerves jumping, taking one sleeping-tablet after another to induce a few hours of dull unrefreshing slumber.

She was shaken by sudden anger.

“I want my room to myself!” she thought, gritting her teeth like a defiant child, and clenching her fists. “Every animal has its hole into which to creep! I want a room where I can be alone. I must be alone, I must have rest. I don’t want any stranger in my room!”

Exhausted and close to tears, she supported herself for a moment against the wall. She was considering whether it would not be better to go out again, to take refuge in a coffee-house and read the papers. But she was tired and dreaded the cold dark street. Moreover, she would have to come home in the end, and up until midnight there would be someone constantly waiting for her in her room.

So she walked with sudden decision to her door. She decided to feign a headache. Ah, she would probably have one soon from anxiety and anger. She would simply go to bed, make compresses, and swallow powders, replying to all questions with a curt yes or no. Then, perhaps, she would presently be left alone.

As she opened her door, she felt for a moment as if she were dreaming or insane.

All the doors and drawers of her desk were open. White heaps stood up like little mountains. Her hasty glance took in letters, pictures, books, notebooks—everything in wild disorder.

Before the open drawers Gisela was kneeling in a shirt and black silk underwear, rummaging among Myra’s linen.

The worst that one could do to Myra was to touch her unprotected things.

She sprang at Gisela, seizing her bare arm angrily.

“What are you doing here? What’s in your mind?” she cried.

Gisela was not in the least frightened. “You come too soon,” she said coldly, baring her teeth with a mocking twitch of her lips. “Yes, you come too soon. I know very well what I’m talking about. I mean not too late, too soon. If you had come five minutes later, all would have been over.”

“What is the meaning of this?” Myra was becoming more and more enraged, rather than frightened, although the face that had been pushed close to hers for some hundred seconds, was strange and weird. “What are you doing here? Why are you going through my things?”

“I’m looking for something,” said Gisela, sharply and contemptuously. “You can see for yourself that I’m looking for something. Is it any of your business? I really don’t think it _is_ any of your business. I really don’t believe that anything,” she touched Myra’s breast several times with one finger, “goes on in there, in your heart. Or in my heart for you. I’m in the ground, deep in the ground.” With a gentle broken voice and a face distorted by sorrow, she sang, “In the cool ground.” Suddenly in a completely altered tone that was clear and almost businesslike, she said, “I’m looking for your revolver.”

Myra started to glance at the night-table, but with almost superhuman energy checked herself when she saw that Gisela’s eyes were glued to her face, watching every expression.

“What do you want with the revolver?” she asked very quietly. “It’s no plaything for you.”

“What do I want with the revolver?” said Gisela with a plaintive singing child’s voice. “To hold it against my temple, to pull the trigger, to die, to sleep. What a question! What do I want with the revolver? Ai, ai, what do people generally do with revolvers? Ai, ai....” She suddenly began to laugh. “Have you ever heard anybody say ‘Ai, ai,’ before in your life? It’s too stupid! Who can have invented the expression? Ai, ai! Ai, ai!” She began to laugh louder and louder. She laughed so much that the tears ran down her face. She shook her head so that wisps of hair fluttered about her forehead while she kept repeating, “Ai, ai! Ai, ai!”

Suddenly she got up and her slender elegantly shod foot kicked her clothes which were lying on the floor.

“You mustn’t be surprised that I got undressed,” she said, “I did it intentionally because I felt too warm. You’ll probably think it’s not right for me to undress in your room. If so, I forthwith beg your pardon, ask your forgiveness.” She said it very formally. “You’ll think a lot of things are not right because you come from a higher sphere of society. In other words, you’re just a spheroid!” Again she began to laugh hysterically. “I never did know what that was, but you’re exactly what I imagined a spheroid looked like!” She tottered and supported herself with both hands against the commode; her eyes were half shut, her mouth was distorted with pain. “If anybody in all this world loved me, she would put me to bed now. Oh, if I could only lie down so that my brain would get back into place again. It has turned over. But that’s the way it feels, exactly that way.”

Myra caught her elbow and supported her.

“Come, I’ll put you to bed.” She made an effort to speak very gently. “Come, you poor child. You can lie down and be comfortable on the divan. Then your poor brain will get back into place again. You are tired and you must sleep. Then you’ll be fresh and cheerful again in a few hours.”

She took the slender, limp body by the shoulders, and guiding Gisela to the divan, laid her among the cushions and covered her with a blanket from the bed.

She sat beside Gisela, mechanically caressing her cold, and apparently lifeless hands until the girl’s irregular breathing grew more quiet. Her limbs relaxed and her head sank deep among the pillows.

Myra sat for a while without moving, for she was afraid she would wake the sleeper. At any rate, it was quiet in her room now.

She looked at the clock. In half an hour Gisela was supposed to be at the cabaret. Myra cast a glance at the exhausted face with its worn features and open mouth. It was hardly possible to awaken the sleeper now and remind her of her obligations. Nor had Myra the slightest desire to do so.

She rose quietly to go to the telephone. She wanted at least to call up the cabaret and tell them that Gisela was sick. Perhaps she could save her a fine in that way. Moreover, the thought was unbearable to her middle-class sensibilities that people would be waiting there, becoming more and more excited from moment to moment, and not know what had happened.

At first she walked on tiptoe, glancing back cautiously like a criminal, toward the night-table, planning to remove the revolver. She wondered where she could put it. No place seemed safe enough. She decided to carry it on her person, and as she did not want it seen, she thrust it into her waist. It felt heavy and cold and gruesome hanging in her light shirt, and although she had tried the safety catch, she thought that at every step the slightest jolt would loosen it, jar the trigger, and drive a bullet through her breast. Defiantly, she told herself that nothing better could happen, controlling her fear in that fashion.

She waited a long time in the telephone booth before she gave her number because she thought she heard steps in the hall, or doors opening. She did not want anybody to overhear her conversation.

When she finally got her connection, she had to repeat three separate times the litany that Miss Werkenthin was ill and could not come.

“One moment, please, I’ll connect you with the office,” said the first, very courteous voice.

“Wait a minute, I’ll give you the manager,” said the second less affably.

“So,” said the third sharp voice, “so Miss Werkenthin is sick. Well, the doctor will decide that! He’ll be at her room in a quarter of an hour.”

“Miss Werkenthin is not at her room,” said Myra with a throbbing heart. “She is at my room.”

“And who are you anyway?”

“A friend of Miss Werkenthin.” No, not even if they had broken her on the rack would Myra have told him her name. “Miss Werkenthin was visiting me and she fainted.”

She heard the mocking intonation with which the voice repeated, “She went to a friend’s house and fainted!”

Another voice hoarse with rage, shouted into the mouthpiece, “She’s drunk, huh?”

Myra heard somebody being dragged away and pacified, and more rude muttering. “Morphine, coke and alcohol, one after the other!”

“Tell your friend,” this was the first sharp voice, and the contemptuous “your friend” was like a blow to Myra, “that while I can understand her preferring the pleasure of your company to an appearance on my stage, I can also assure her that it is no pleasure at all for me to pay her a high wage for nothing or less than nothing. Miss Werkenthin must come with a doctor’s certificate tomorrow or she will be dismissed.”

The receiver was hung up with a bang.

For a painful moment Myra considered phoning the doctor. Perhaps he could be moved to write a certificate.

But she would have to give her name and address. She would have to meet this strange man and take him into her room. She was boiling with indignation. How had she been precipitated into all this?

She returned to her room without making a sound. When she saw her things scattered on the floor, another wave of anger swept over her.

She did not want to go out. But neither did she like to see everything ransacked and thrown about in this fashion.

She turned a chair so that its back was to the desolation in the room and on the divan. She picked up a scientific work and endeavored to concentrate on it. On the divan, the regular breathing was so hoarse and harsh that it seemed not to come from that delicate body. The disorder behind her signified disturbance too. It was as if the open drawers and doors were uttering a cry for help. And she seemed to have eyes in the back of her head which could see through the easy-chair to the pieces of paper and batiste which stood out white against the dark carpet.

The walking and talking ceased outside. It grew still in the room, still in the house.

The heat died down, the room became colder and colder.

The cold crept from the floor into Myra’s legs. She drew up her feet on the chair, but that did not help for long.

Beside her on the floor lay Gisela’s coat. She picked it up and wrapped it around her knees. A cloud of dust rose from it. Disgusted, she threw it back on the carpet.

She was shivering with cold and agitation and weariness.

Long after midnight she got up to fetch her own coat from the nearest chair. Her limbs were stiff and hurt at every move. As cautiously as she stepped the boards creaked, and Gisela started up with a cry.

Her eyelids were swollen thick, her hair hung in tangled strands around her pale, haggard face.

“Who’s there?” she cried. “Oh, it’s you, Myra!” She laughed slightly embarrassed. “I thought it was someone breaking in!”

“I called up the Trocadero,” said Myra quietly and wearily. “I think Kayser himself answered the telephone. You missed the performance. He was very angry. You have to bring a doctor’s certificate in the morning, or he’ll let you go.”

“Let him,” said Gisela scornfully. “He’s ridiculous with his threats!”

Myra shrugged her shoulders. “Perhaps you can tell him that yourself tomorrow. It was unpleasant enough to let myself be treated by such a man as if it were my fault.”

“Poor Myra.” It sounded sincerely remorseful and without a trace of sarcasm. “You don’t know how bad you make me feel. Must your poor little bourgeois soul with its thousand cares be worried about me!” She worked her way out from under the blanket. “I was pretty much in my right mind before, when I was looking for the revolver, believe me! I know exactly what I am worth, and what is best for my own sake and everybody else’s.”

She sat on the divan, gazing gloomily at her slender legs in their black silk stockings.

“My mother always prophesied that I’d end in the gutter. Even when I was a little girl. And I must end soon if it isn’t to be there. I’m sick, tomorrow I may be breadless. My voice is gone, ruined. Tomorrow I’ll be hunting a lover at the club, the day after at the café, the week after on the street.”

She raised her face which was bathed in tears.

“Give me your revolver, Myra, I beg you. You’ll be doing a good deed. I’ll write a farewell letter so that you won’t be under suspicion. I beg you, have mercy on me!”

“I haven’t got it any more,” Myra lied. “I’ve hidden it.” At that moment she felt it hanging heavily in the loose bulge on her shirtwaist so that the collar was like a tight narrow band around her neck.

“What will happen now?” she thought. “I’ll never get rid of her. It will go on like this. I’ll find her in my room every time I come home. She won’t have a job any longer, and no money. She’ll stick to me like a burr. And that’s what my life will be like! Why should all this have happened? How have I deserved it? Only because I let myself be pleased by her affection. Has she any claim on me because of that, have I given myself into her hands body and soul?”

Shivering with cold, Gisela crossed her bare arms over her breast.

“It’s cold here,” she said. “Why didn’t you come to bed, poor little beastie? It must certainly be very late—much too late for me to catch a car home. Ah, I feel changed. Come, Myra girl, let us both come to bed so that we’ll be warm. Do you feel as deathly cold as I do?”

“No,” said Myra curtly. “Lie down. I want to read a little more. I’m still too wide awake.”

“I’ll lie close to the wall,” Gisela said. “You’ll have room.”

“Yes, yes, thanks!”

Myra sat perfectly still again in her deep easy-chair. Again the weight of the revolver made a fine tight band across her neck. She reflected on her conduct and became dizzy as if she saw an abyss which she had crossed without having been aware of its terrible depth.

Had not a voice within her cried only a moment before, “Do it! Give her the revolver! Let her make an end of it, and then you’ll have peace!”

If she had done that, there would have been a shot, blood and brains would have spurted, a corpse would be lying in her room, or a dying woman.

She, Myra Rudloff, would have committed a murder!

Out of cowardliness, out of love of comfort, out of petty pitiful selfishness. She had already committed that murder in her mind. All that had been needed was an innocent lifting of her hand....

And then....

She shuddered and cowered.

From the bed came a deep regular breathing.

Myra’s mouth twisted into a scornful smile.

“But she would not have done it,” she thought, “she’d never have done it.”

* * * * *

A highroad stretched away toward the light. In the dark shadowy corners that the sun never reached, little stained rotting patches of snow were still lying. The fruit trees at either side of the road were laden with little ball-like buds on which a white streak was already discernible. The woods in the distance were enveloped in a reddish veil that betokened new life.

Myra and Sophie were wandering along the road.

“God, it’s beautiful,” said Myra, opening her mouth to draw the pure invigorating air into her lungs. “It was a wonderful idea of Nora’s to chase us both out!”

“Nora always has wonderful ideas,” said Sophie with a happy, affectionate pride. “She always knows what I need and what will do me good much better than I do myself. For the most part I never know what is the matter with me. Actually, I feel uncomfortable and I don’t know whether I should like to sleep, eat or go for a walk. Then Nora says to me, ‘You ought to lie down,’ or ‘you need to get out into the air’—and it’s always the right thing.”

“Good God, how beautiful the world is!” Myra exulted. “Oh, Sophus, I’m so insanely grateful to you for making me conscious again!”

“We will walk often in the open together,” said Sophie. “I’ll show you all the things that I looked at a hundred times long ago, very long ago, at a period when I was desperately lonely and devoured by the need of some human soul to whom I could show them. We must come here when the fruit trees are in bloom, and afterwards, when the whole woods is a garden of dog-roses and May-flowers, and in September when the leaves have turned.” She seized Myra’s hand, clasping the wrist with a grip so firm that it was almost painful. “You must not go away—that was all nonsense that I preached to you before. We’ll have to put your life to rights here. We must find something for you to do, and you must furnish a nice little home so that you don’t have to remain in that horrible pension. Then you’ll come after work and chat with us and once a week we’ll have to declare a holiday and run around the mountains from morning till night.” Suddenly she changed her tone and said with an amusing dryness, “And then when we’re tired out, we’ll stand on some declivity where we can smell the dinner that God destined for us, steaming out of the chimney pots below, and we won’t be able to get down....”

“We’ll get down!” said Myra confidently. “If for no other reason, because we can’t do anything else. Or shall we turn aside from our goal to seek an easier way? Never!”

At first, while their feet sank in the rustling leaves, the going was easy. But during the last stage, just on a level with the roofs, above the road, there were more pines and spruces and the ground was strewn with needles which in the bright sunlight were smoother than a waxed floor.

Sophie who was accustomed from childhood to the ups and downs of mountains, though she was somewhat out of practice of late, was nevertheless much surer-footed than Myra, who looked for a supporting branch from step to step. Sophie stretched out her hand to her, but Myra declined it ambitiously. Whereupon both of them began to laugh at themselves, at one another, at their little adventure, at the quips they shouted. All that was necessary was for one of them to warn the other that he might slip, to turn the laughter they were trying to suppress into a peal of childish merriment. Myra laughed until the tears came into her eyes. She was no longer watching where she stepped. Suddenly her feet slipped, a branch which she caught at snapped and remained in her hands. She would certainly have fallen had not Sophie, whose one foot was supported against a root, stooped and caught her and held her upright. They remained for a moment breast to breast, hot, laughing, panting for breath, while their pulses throbbed. At the same moment both became serious. Their faces bent one toward the other—humbly, ineluctably, lips were laid against lips.

Myra closed her eyes. She felt Sophie’s feverish mouth on her eyelids, her temples, her cheeks. She heard her hot voice in a whisper.

“Don’t move, don’t resist, or we will both go plunging down!”

She had no thought of resisting. She had no thought of moving. She stood motionless. Her heart seemed to expand, to grow warm. It seemed to her as if she must flower under these caresses like a young tree in May.