Part 8

Or if Olga would return and say, “Don’t go! Don’t leave me! Let us go somewhere else, anywhere they can’t find us. Prove to me how much you love me: give up everything for me! What is that strange dead man to you? Nothing! You belong to me, are mine! I demand of you that you remain with me. I don’t want to be parted from you, not for a single hour.”

Yes, that would be the most beautiful way, but of all impossible things, the most impossible.

Olga opened the door. Her movements, though quick, were as gentle as if she were entering a sick-room.

“At nine forty-five,” she said and glanced at her wrist-watch. “So we have plenty of time to pack and eat a bite.”

Myra felt a twinge of something like resentment. She _had to_ go. She was simply being sent. Would Olga have gone in her place? Olga acted freely and flew in the face of everything that was considered convention. But Myra must be bound by what was normal, commonplace, proper. The train left at nine forty-five—she was not even asked if she wanted to take it. It was the next train, therefore she was to go on it.

She continued to pack her suitcase, with a sullen expression.

“Can I help you?” asked Olga gravely and gently.

“Thanks, no!” said Myra curtly.

Olga’s compassionate tone tormented her. She would have liked so much to speak the brutal truth: “You don’t need to treat me as if I were an invalid. The worst of this business for me is that we have to part, that I have to go away from here, that our fairy-tale life here must end.” But she did not possess the courage to say so. Yet she felt that Olga was withdrawing herself almost timidly, as if she had no right to disturb Myra in her sacred, childish grief.

In packing, Myra’s hand accidentally touched something carefully wrapped in tissue paper on the bottom of the suitcase. She tore off the wrapping, so that the shreds fluttered to the floor and held the gold cigarette-case in her hand.

“Oh, Myra!” cried Olga with a soft exclamation of surprise. “There it is again! How long has it been there?”

“It has never been anywhere else,” said Myra with a rather strained smile. “I could never bring myself to give it into a stranger’s dirty hands. I really did not want to say anything about it to you. I intended to send it to you at Christmas. But that’s all silliness, I’d rather give it to you now.”

Myra walked over and placed it in Olga’s hands.

Olga held the case very quietly on her fingers without closing them over it while she regarded it with a profoundly thoughtful smile.

“Strange,” she said without raising her eyes. “Why now? Why today? One must not be superstitious, but sometimes it is hard....”

* * * * *

At home there was the odor of sickness and death. The maids sat about drunk with sleep, with swollen eyes and stupid faces.

Everywhere there were lights burning. Not bright, cheerful, radiant lights, but individual lamps casting a faint glow in one or two rooms. The doors stood open or ajar so that one could see that it was not night in this house, that no one was sleeping, that people were constantly hurrying to and fro. And through the open doors, too, came the monotonous rattling in the throat of the dying man. It filled all the rooms.

Her owlish eyes wide open in her puckered face, Aunt Emily flitted about like a spook.

“You come too late!” she said with icy triumph as she confronted Myra. “There is no more hope.”

Myra felt as if something dreadful ought to happen to her, and the sudden consciousness of being so depraved, so unfeeling that nothing could happen to her, that even this woman’s immeasurable hate implied too high an opinion of her, brought the tears to her eyes, for she was tired and over-excited.

Aunt Emily, of course, could not divine these thoughts.

“Your tears are too late, too!” she said meanly.

Each of the twenty hours that followed had a thousand minutes. Myra paced to and fro, or sat now in one chair, now in another. Everywhere she felt out of place, in the way, and observed by evil eyes.

She was worn out in every limb and felt the need, if only for an hour, to lock herself into her room and throw herself on her bed. But she lacked the courage.

She knew they expected her to stand flooding repentant tears or to sit by her father’s death bed, or better yet, to kneel. She endeavored to control the horror that from time to time shook her, and went in. The heavy air smelt of decomposition and medicines. Among the many white pillows lay a small, strangely bony skull with closed eyes, an alien, distorted mask, whose yellowish lips moved gently as it gasped.

Myra sat for a while beside the bed, terrified lest that dreadful rattle in the throat should cease suddenly; terrified still more lest that strange something should suddenly open its eyes and begin speaking.

Doctors entered, conferred in whispers, bestowed sympathetic glances on her, and went out again.

The maid spread the table at the usual time and urged her to eat something. Aunt Emily left all the connecting-doors open, listening intently while she spooned her soup, for any change in that monotonously rattling throat.

It was all Myra could do to choke down a bite.

The twilight set in early and again the lamps were lit.

Myra picked up a book, but encountered so furious a glance from Aunt Emily that she laid it down again, and folded her hands spiritlessly in her lap.

Toward evening the rattlings grew feebler. The bridge of the nose stood out sharply against the tiny shrunken face. The doctor who came at night did not go away again. Now there was one more to sit in silence or pace noiselessly to and fro across the thick carpets—waiting.

The rattlings grew more and more feeble. Then a louder, grating expiration of the breath, twice, with short pauses. Then suddenly—silence.

And suddenly, too, as if it had just begun, they heard the ticking of every clock in the house.

The doctor bent over the bed, then drew himself up and walked over to Myra to give her his hand. Aunt Emily dabbed her dry eyes and the maids outside sobbed.

Myra saw and heard it all as if through a dense veil; she was afraid of fainting.

The doctor probably observed her greenish, livid appearance, and laid his hand on her hair. “Go lie down, my child,” he said gently. “You can be of no further use here. You have sad days behind you and before you. Youth needs sleep.”

Myra was glad to be in her room. But she did not think of lying down. When, after an interval, she heard the doctor go a nameless dread seized on her. She was so tired and yet so afraid to sleep lest horrible dreams torment her once she relaxed control of her thoughts.

If her heavy eyelids shut for a moment, she saw the dying man’s distorted features, or Aunt Emily trying to seize her with her claws to strangle her, or Uncle George raising his arm to strike her with an enormous bunch of keys that would crush her aching head.

Myra reached out longingly for another hand that would clasp hers warmly and firmly. But her cold fingers remained empty. Finally, she could not endure her terrors any longer. Slipping into her coat, she stole down the rear stairs and out of the house.

The cold night air awoke her from her trance. She ran, rather than walked, through the streets to Olga’s house. The house was locked. Myra stood for a while undecided. Perhaps someone who lived there would be coming home late, or the watchman would unlock the door for her for a tip.

She waited a long time. She was shivering with cold. At last she woke up the doorman. But at the top of the first stairs, she hesitated again before she dared ring.

She sat down on the steps and laid her forehead against the wooden door-jamb. She endeavored to awaken Olga, to summon her by thinking intensely of her, by ardent entreaty, by fierce willing. From time to time she thought she heard her light step approaching the door and she listened breathlessly, only to perceive that she was mistaken.

At last she had to make up her mind to ring. It was a long time before a very sleepy, half-dressed girl opened the door. She told some tale of having just come from the train and of being unable to go home because she had left her key with Miss Radó. She laughed as she was saying it and had a feeling that the girl thought her positively demented.

She groped her way along the familiar hall, fearing, for some incomprehensible reason, to strike a light. Perhaps she was afraid that the noise or the illumination would wake someone, or perhaps she had some unconscious dread of being seen, and felt herself safer in the dark.

As she stood in front of Olga’s door she felt suddenly, and with a painful intensity so strong that she thought it must be premonition, that Olga was not alone—that this horrible day was to have a still more horrible close.

She leaned against the wall, not daring to knock or to lift the latch. A voice, which she seemed to hear speaking distinctly outside her, said, “What are you seeking here? What right have you to force your way in here? Where did you acquire the boundless audacity to feel at home here?”

The door opened noiselessly and a feeble ray of light appeared. In its glow stood Olga Radó, tall and slender in a varicolored dark kimono, one hand on the latch, peering sharply from under her knitted brows. She saw and recognized Myra at once.

“Myra!” she exclaimed softly, and closed her eyes a moment as if frightened. “I knew it! What has happened, child? How did you get up here?”

Myra did not walk, she staggered. She went into the room, looking at the soft light of the shaded lamp on the papers, on the desk, on the backs of the books, on the silk cushions. Colors and shapes were a marvellous exhilaration. She let herself slide to the floor, laying her head against the easy-chair, and saying between tears and a laugh, between waking and sleeping, “Let me stay here, it is so good!”

Olga raised her, undressed her like a little child and laid her in the bed. As the cold sheets touched her body, horror set her trembling again. Once more she was wide awake, and sat bolt upright in the bed, striving to control the chattering of her teeth.

“Lie beside me,” she pleaded, “I must feel that I’m not alone. I’m so dreadfully frightened.”

Olga did not answer. She bolted the door, she set the lamp behind the bed, spread another silken veil over the light and let the kimono fall from her shoulders—all with a sad smile and slow, languid movements as if she were preparing for a sacrifice. Then she put her arm under Myra’s neck, tucked the coverlet more tightly around her and stroked the tangled hair from her forehead.

And as Myra felt the warmth of that beloved life, the strong pulse of that heart, she began to weep, quietly, released from pain. She cried herself to sleep.

After an interval, she did not know if it were hours or minutes, she awoke again. The light was still burning. Olga lay motionless beside her, her eyes wide open. Myra sat up and released her arm.

“Why didn’t you wake me?” she said reproachfully. “Poor thing, I must have broken your arm, that’s why you can’t sleep.”

Olga turned her head a little. “I should not have slept anyway. I’m so wide awake.”

“What were you thinking of?” asked Myra, trying to fathom her eyes.

Olga smiled a little wearily.

“I was thinking that your people are probably searching the whole house by now. I should like to know, or better, I’d rather not know, what is going on in Aunt Emily’s head at this moment. She certainly must think you’ve been bitten by a tarantula!”

Myra laughed softly and put her arm around Olga.

“By a scorpion!” she said tenderly. “There is no antidote but its own poison. You know that very well.”

Olga sat up and clasped her hands about her knees. Her glossy black curls fell luxuriantly about her shoulders. Her eyes gazed straight ahead and her wide pupils darkened the irises.

“What a strange fate!” she said in a vibrant tone as soft and deep as a cello’s. “That I must be stung by the scorpion and yet look for healing to the same creature.”

Her pale beautiful features assumed an expression of fierce, of sorrowful, of almost weird energy.

Myra was so terrified that her heart seemed to miss a beat. She did not have the courage to touch Olga, to embrace her.

“Olga!” she cried, in fear and pain, and stretched out her hands to her.

Again that troubled smile played about those pale lips. Olga threw both her arms around Myra and clasped her to her as if her embrace must smother, must annihilate, must destroy.

“Ah, little Myra!” she said with a little explosive laugh, “it’s all no good! You’ll have to let me take the easy road first, then perhaps, everything will be all right.”

IX

In her sleep Myra heard a violent ringing. Then she woke up: doors were slamming, steps approaching, there were many excited voices.

She opened her eyes and saw Olga standing beside the bed, already fully dressed. She was very pale, her eyes dark and blazing. “Get up, Myra,” she commanded in a voice that was breathless with excitement, “get up for God’s sake and dress!”

Myra threw on her things in mad haste. Meanwhile they were pounding on the door. Olga immediately went over to it, unbolted and opened it a crack.

“Who is there?”

Loud excited voices in the hall: excited faces trying to force themselves through the crack.

“I’m sorry, I can’t permit you in my room at this moment,” Olga said with icy courtesy.

Some voices began to shout louder than the others, Aunt Emily and Uncle George. Also the girl who had admitted Myra that night.

Myra’s hands were trembling as in a nightmare. She could not button her dress. She was aware only of a dreadful desire to be invisible or to jump out of the window or to sink into some vast unconsciousness.

Olga’s voice rose above the clamor, deep and calm, but as cold and sharp as polished steel.

“Does this conversation have to take place in the hall?”

Then suddenly, a soft, gentle voice: “May I offer the use of my room. I’ll be glad to step out.”

The voices withdrew next door and a few moments later—Myra had thrown on her dress—Peterkin stole into the room.

“Can I help you, Myra?” he whispered. His eyes were troubled.

At the same moment, there came a sound from next door as if a stick had been smashed across a table.

“I’ll have you thrown into jail!” thundered Uncle George.

Myra wanted to rush in, but Peterkin restrained her, imploring her not to go. “Don’t, don’t!” he begged. “Fix your hair quickly! Put on your shoes!” While she smoothed her hair, he knelt before her and buttoned her shoes. She let him. She could not dash next door in her stocking-feet, with her hair unkempt, to the immense pleasure of all the people peeping through the cracks in their doors.

When Myra did go down the hall to the next room, she was quite calm, quite erect, and sustained by a strong, brave, hot and almost joyous determination.

At the bottom of the hall stood a strange man with his hat and overcoat on. He looked her over with a piercing glance.

“Straight from her father’s dead body!” whimpered Aunt Emily with high pathos.

“The criminal police in a decent house!” screamed Frau Flesch. “Never in all my life have I had anything to do with the police!”

Myra pressed down hard on the latch. Her pulse was throbbing in her neck. For an instant the thought flashed through her mind: Perhaps it was best that this happened. Perhaps it was a good thing that she must now have the courage to take her place beside Olga and say, “I belong to her and will never leave her, even if you tear her and me into little pieces! If you have the courage and the right, use force on me, for I’ll never go one step with you of my own free will.”

Olga was standing, leaning against the table, her arms crossed on her breast, the fingers clasping her elbows.

As Myra opened the door, Aunt Emily rushed to her with a choking cry, “Here is the unfortunate child!”

Myra stood for an instant as though numbed. For a moment she felt as if she were among lunatics or had gone mad herself. With a hasty glance, she thought how very becoming to Uncle George were his stern manner, his steel-blue eyes and his iron-gray mustache against a face crimson with rage.

He came up to her and said in a deep, rough voice that trembled with something like emotion, “Myra, my child, what are you doing here? We’re burying your poor father tomorrow and you’re here!”

He laid his heavy hand on her shoulder.

Myra did not look at him. She was looking at Olga.

“This is my home,” she said. She meant her voice to sound vibrant and firm, but she could not manage it, and it sounded soft and tremulous.

“If you think you have the right, go ahead and use force on me, for I’ll never go one step with you of my own free will.”

It was hard, very hard, to say that. Very hard to say it under Uncle George’s honest gaze while his face was distorted with rage and sorrow, under Aunt Emily’s little blinking bird-eyes, or Frau Flesch’s spongy face that seemed fixed in a repulsively avid grin. Hard to say it in front of the strange man and the maid, who were listening in the hall.

But now it was said. And now everything would be all right. Now Olga would come and take her in her arms, would press Myra’s head against her breast so that she need not hear or see anything more, would, with one of her haughty and imperious gestures, show all these strange and horrible faces the door, would point her revolver at these intruders and drive them out with a single word....

Olga turned her head without changing her position, and looked at Myra. Everybody thought she was looking at Myra and gave an involuntary start.

But actually her eyes were merely resting on Myra’s forehead, eyebrows and hair.

Myra strove to intercept her gaze, but could not. It was fixed on her forehead, her eyebrows, her hair—on a line above her eyes.

“My dear child,” said Olga with a gentleness that was icy-cold, “your sense of dependence on me is touching, but I have done nothing to merit it. If you feel about me as you say, you ought to go with your relatives, behave like a rational creature and spare me your visits in the future. You must see that they occasion me nothing but unpleasantness!”

Myra hesitated for a moment. “Something must happen,” she thought, “she must look at me, she must give me some sign, a glance, a gesture, that this is all comedy, that I must trust her, believe in her, wait for an explanation....”

But nothing did happen.

Myra racked her brain for something terrible with which to shatter that stony mask. Could she not say, “You made me come, lured me, forced me and now you deny me”? No, she had no right to do that. But could she not think of some abusive word, something that would pierce, would wound, something cruel?

She turned over various silly childish epithets in her mind: they were as heavy as blocks of stone.

“Canaille!” she thought. “Harlot!” That was not what she was seeking. It seemed to her as if she must shove the blocks of stone this way and that in feverish search for the one sharp word she must fling.

Suddenly, she felt as if she had stood there an endless time, with arms hanging, and vacant eyes and open mouth.

She drew herself up and attempted a smile that would be at once proud and affable. But she felt as she was doing it, as if madness were twitching the distorted muscles of her face.

“Will you telephone for a taxi, Uncle George?” she said. “I am too tired to walk.”

She went to the door. “I just want to gather up my things. I won’t be a moment.”

She went into the next room, put on her hat before the mirror very carefully, threw on her coat and looked for her bag. She did not hurry at all. She still had some mad feeling that Olga must steal in and whisper something to her—where they could meet, where she should write, when she could explain it all to her. But no Olga came.

As Myra opened her bag, she noticed a little wad of tightly pressed bills.—What was left from their trip. She took them out, laughing bitterly. Probably she would no longer be in any way tempted to steal.

Probably she would never again need money as long as she lived.

She raised her hand and opened it, letting the bills flutter down on the disordered bed.

Then she went out, past the strange man, past the maid, downstairs and out of the house, without once looking back.

* * * * *

In the street she got into the taxi with her relatives.

Uncle George remained for a while in the city. His behavior was really curious. He was quiet and kind, and always fixed upon Myra a pair of honest, anxious blue eyes, and always spoke to her in a slightly emotional tone. But there was never a word about the money or her flight.

When Myra pondered this behavior—she did not do so very often—she found only one explanation for it. She did not think it might be remorse because his vehement letter had occasioned her unhappy father’s death. Nor did it ever occur to her that he was striving to win her affection through love and kindness. No, probably she was a source of irritation to him. But he had seen Olga Radó. Had heard her voice. Had experienced something of her power. When Myra thought of that, she almost loved him.

He had heard how Olga denied, betrayed and humiliated her. And he sympathized with her. When Myra thought of that, she hated him.

Even Aunt Emily was singularly gentle. Myra thought later that it would have been better if they had tormented and wounded her at that time, and thereby made her strong through steely hate.

Aunt Emily and the entire family were all for expressing the depth of one’s grief by the length of one’s veil. Nobody was going to say that Myra, the depraved daughter, the unruly offspring, did not mourn her father’s death.

The first time Myra saw herself in a mirror, black crêpe from head to toe, slender and pale, with lifeless eyes and a mouth distorted with grief, she thought, “Like a widow!” Her heart contracted painfully.

When they drove to the interment, they sat side by side. Aunt Emily’s black-gloved right hand held a white handkerchief to her quivering lips; her left held Myra’s hand. And Uncle George stared out the window while from time to time a tear rolled from his blue eye and into his mustache.

Myra felt as if she had been a mountain: her stony invulnerability had turned aside every shot. But now an explosion had torn a crater in her. She was hollow inside, a deep, dark, precipitous chasm. The savage wound lay exposed to view, and everything fell into it without let or hindrance, lay in her like heavy stones, tortured her—everything, glances, words, tears, gestures.

“Woe to those who have torn me asunder!” she thought bitterly.

Then her fingers clasped Aunt Emily’s a little tighter for a moment. “We belong together,” she thought. “Forsaken, loveless, unhappy people who have grown hard and bitter—we belong together. There are two great families in this world—the rich and the poor, the sound and the sick, the laughers and the weepers.... Olga Radó belongs among the happy: she has triumphed, she has justified herself, she has rid herself of me—now she can go, laughing, to the next adventure.”

Myra did not always think such thoughts. She was a prey to the most conflicting feelings. There were sleepless nights when she thought that everything would be all right if only she could hold Olga’s hand and ask, “How did you come to do it, child? How could such a thing happen? What were you thinking of at the time?”

The next day she would pace up and down Motz Street and stare at the house across the way—but always in vain.

Then there were days when Aunt Emily displayed a loathsomely friendly sympathy and let fall insinuations concerning the ingratitude of the world in general and in particular, and how lonely Myra now was because she had given all her affection to such a person.