Part 13

“Ivan Becker wrote me about you,” Eva said in muffled tones. “I kissed the letter. I carried it in my bosom, and said the words of it over to myself. Is there such a thing as an awakening? Can the soul emerge from the darkness, as a flower does from the bulb? But there you stand in your pride, and do not move. Speak! Our time is short.”

“Why speak at all?”

Although his eyes seemed so unseeing, it did not escape him that Eva’s face had changed. A new severity was on it, and a heightened will controlled its nerves, even to the raising and lowering of her long lashes. Experience of men and things had lent it an austere radiance, and her unbounded mastery over them a breath of grandeur.

“I had not forgotten that this is the city where you dwell,” she said, “but in these driven hours there was no place for you. They count my steps, and lie in wait for the end of my sleeping. What I should have is either a prison or a friend unselfish enough to force me to be more frugal of myself. In Lisbon the queen gave me a beautiful big dog, who was so devoted to me that I felt it in my very body. A week later he was found poisoned at the gate of the garden. I could have put on mourning for him. How silent and watchful he was, and how he could love!” She raised her shoulders with a little shiver, dropped them again, and continued with hurry in her voice. “I shall summon you some day. Will you come? Will you be ready?”

“I shall come,” Christian answered very simply, but his heart throbbed.

“Is your feeling for me the same--changeless and unchangeable?” In her look there was an indescribably lyrical lift, and her body, moved by its spirit, seemed to emerge from veils.

He only bowed his head.

“And how is it in the matter of _cortesia_?” She came nearer to him, so that he felt her breath on his lips. “He smiles,” she exclaimed, and her lips opened, showing her teeth, “instead of just once throwing himself on his knees in rage or jubilation--he smiles. Take care, you with your smile, that I am not tempted to extinguish your smiling some day.” She stripped the glove from her right hand, and gave the naked hand to Christian, who touched it with his lips. “It is a compact, Eidolon,” she said serenely now, and with an air of seduction, “and you will be ready.” Emerging from the niche, she turned to the gentlemen who had come with her, and who had been holding whispered conversations: “Messieurs, nous sommes bien pressés.”

She inclined her head to the jeweller, and the heron feathers trembled. The four gentlemen let her precede them swiftly, and followed her silently and reverently.

IX

When next Christian went through the village and saw Amadeus Voss at the window, he stopped.

Voss got up suddenly and opened the window, and thereupon Christian approached.

It was a time of thaw. The water dripped from the roofs and gutters. Christian felt the moist air swept by tepid winds as something that gives pain.

Behind the powerful lenses the eyes of Amadeus Voss had a yellowish glitter. “We must be old acquaintances,” he said, “although it is very long ago since we hunted blackberries among the hedges. Very long.” He laughed a little weakly.

Christian had determined to lead the conversation to the dead brother of Amadeus. There was that event in the mist of the past concerning which he could gain no clearness, much as he might reflect.

“I suppose everybody is wondering about me,” Voss said, in the tone of one who would like to know what people are saying. “I seem to be a stumbling-block to them. Don’t you think so?”

“I mustn’t presume to judge,” Christian said, guardedly.

“With what an expression you say that!” Voss murmured, and looked Christian all over. “How proud you are. Yet it must have been curiosity that made you stop.”

Christian shrugged his shoulders. “Do you remember an incident that took place when I stayed here with my father?” he asked gently and courteously.

“What kind of an incident? I don’t know. Or--but wait! Do you mean that affair of the pig? When they killed the pig over there in the inn, and I----”

“Quite right. That was it,” Christian said with a faint smile. He had scarcely spoken when the scene and the incident appeared with unwonted clarity before his mind.

He and Amadeus and the deaf and dumb Dietrich had been standing at the gate. And the pig had begun to scream. At that moment Amadeus had stretched out his arms, and held them convulsively trembling in the air. The long, loud, and piercing cry of the beast’s death agony had been something new and dreadful to Christian too, and had drawn him running to the spot whence it came. He saw the gleaming knife, the uplifted and then descending arm of the butcher, the struggle of the short, bristly legs, and the quivering and writhing of the victim’s body. The lips of Amadeus, who had reeled after him, had been flecked with foam, and he pointed and moaned: “Blood, blood!” And Christian had seen the blood on the earth, on the knife, on the white apron of the man. He did not know what happened next. But Amadeus knew.

He said: “When the pig screamed, a convulsive rigour fell upon me. For many hours I lay stiff as a log. My parents were badly frightened, for I had never had any such attacks before. What you remember is probably how they tried to cheer me or shame me out of my collapse. They walked into the puddle of blood and stamped about in it so that the blood spurted. My dumb brother noticed that this only increased my excitement. He made noises in his throat, and raised his hands beseechingly, while my mother was hastening from the house. At that moment you struck him in the face with your fist.”

“It is true. I struck him,” said Christian, and his face became very pale.

“And why? Why did you do that? We haven’t met since that day, and we’ve only seen each other from afar. That is, I’ve seen you. You were far too proud and too busy with your friends to see me. But why did you strike Dietrich that day? He had a sort of silent adoration of you. He followed you about everywhere. Don’t you remember? We often laughed about it. But from that day on he was changed--markedly so.”

“I believe I hated him at that moment,” Christian said, reflectively. “I hated him because he could neither hear nor speak. It struck me as a sort of malevolent stubbornness.”

“Strange! It’s strange that you should have felt so.”

They both became silent. Christian started to leave. Voss rested his arms on the window ledge and leaned far out. “There’s a paragraph in the paper saying that you’ve bought a diamond for half a million. Is that true?”

“It is true,” Christian replied.

“A single diamond for over half a million? I thought it was merely a newspaper yarn. Is the diamond to be seen? Would you show it to me?” In his face there was something of horrified revolt, of panting desire, but also of mockery. Christian was startled.

“With pleasure, if you’ll come to see me,” he answered, but determined to have himself denied to Voss if the latter really came.

For a secret stirred him again, a depth opened at his feet, an arm was stretched out after him.

X

On a certain night Letitia awoke and heard dragging, running steps, the breathing of pursuers and pursued, whispers and hoarse curses, now nearer, now farther. She sat up and listened. Her bed-chamber opened upon gardens. Its doors led to the verandah that surrounded the entire house.

Then the hurrying steps approached; she saw forms that detached themselves in black from the greenish night and flitted by: one, and then another, and then a third, and after a little while a fourth. She was frightened, but she hated to call for help. To rouse Stephen, who slept in the adjoining room, was a risk for her, as it was for every one. At such times he would roar like a steer, and strike out wildly.

Letitia laughed and shuddered at the thought.

She fought her fear, got up, threw on a dressing gown, and stepped determinedly on the verandah. At that moment thick clouds parted and revealed the moon. Surprised by the unexpected light, the four forms stopped suddenly, collided against each other, and stood panting and staring.

What Letitia saw was old Gottlieb Gunderam and his three sons, Riccardo, Paolo, and Demetrios, the brothers of her husband. There was an unquenchable distrust between this father and his sons. They watched and lay in wait for each other. If there was cash in the house, the old man did not dare go to bed, and each of the brothers accused the rest of wanting to rob their father. Letitia knew that much. But it was new to her that in their dumb rage and malice they went so far as to chase each other at night, each pursuer and pursued at once, each full of hatred of the one in front and full of terror of the one behind him. She laughed and shuddered.

The old man was the first to slink away. He dragged himself to his room, and threw himself on the bed in his clothes. Beside the bed stood two huge travelling boxes, packed and locked. They had stood thus for twenty years. Daily, during all that period, he had determined at least once to flee to the house in Buenos Ayres, or even to the United States, whenever the conflict, first with his wife and later with his sons, became too much for him. He had never started on that flight; but the boxes stood in readiness.

Silently and secretively the brothers also disappeared. While Letitia stood on the verandah and looked at the moon, she heard the rattle of a phonograph. Riccardo had recently bought it in the city, and it often happened that he set it to playing at night.

Letitia stepped a little farther, and peered into the room in which the three brothers sat with sombre faces and played poker. The phonograph roared a vulgar waltz out of its brazen throat.

Then Letitia laughed and shuddered.

XI

Christian wondered whether Amadeus would come. Two days passed in slightly depressing suspense.

He had really intended to go to Waldleiningen to look after his horses. Sometimes he could actually see their spirited yet gentle eyes, their velvet coats, and that fine nervousness that vibrated between dignity and restiveness. He recalled with pleasure the very odour of the stables.

The pure bred Scotch horse which he had bought of Denis Lay was to run in the spring races. His grooms told him that the beautiful animal had been in poor form for some weeks, and he thought that perhaps it missed his tender hand. Nevertheless he did not go to Waldleiningen.

On the third day Amadeus Voss sent a gardener to ask whether he might call that evening. Instead Christian went down to the forester’s house that afternoon at four, and knocked at the door.

Voss looked at him suspiciously. With the instinct of the oppressed classes he divined the fact that Christian wanted to keep him from his house. But Christian was far from being as clear about his own motives as Amadeus suspected. He scented a danger. Some magic in it drew him on half-consciously to go forth to meet it.

Looking about in the plain but clean and orderly room Christian saw on the tinted wall above the bed white slips of paper on which verses of Scripture had been copied in a large hand. One was this: “He was led as a sheep to the slaughter; and like a lamb dumb before his shearer, so opened he not his mouth.” And another was this: “For it is a day of trouble, and of treading down, and of perplexity by the Lord God of hosts in the valley of vision, breaking down the walls, and of crying to the mountains.” And this other: “The Lord said unto me, Within a year, within the years of an hireling, and all the glory of Kedar shall fail.” And finally there was this: “I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot; I would thou were cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold or hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.”

* * * * *

Christian looked at Amadeus Voss long and curiously. Then he asked, in a very careful voice, and yet not without an inevitable tinge of worldly mockery: “Are you very religious?”

Amadeus frowned and answered: “Whether I answer one way or the other it will mean equally little to you. Did you come to cross-question me? Have we anything in common that an answer to that question could reveal? Amadeus Voss and Christian Wahnschaffe--are those not the names of sundered poles? What image is there that could express the differences that divide us? Your faith and mine! And such things are possible on the same earth!”

“Was your youth especially hard?” Christian asked, innocently.

Voss gave a short laugh, and looked at Christian sidewise. “D’you know what meal days are? Of course you don’t. Well, on such days you get your meals at strangers’ houses who feed you out of charity. Each day of the week you’re with another family. Each week repeats the last. Not to be thought ungrateful you must be obedient and modest. Even if your stomach revolts at some dish, you must pretend it’s a delicacy. If the grandfather laughs, you must laugh too; if an uncle thinks he’s a wit, you must grin. If the daughter of the house chooses to be insolent, you must be silent. If they respond to your greeting, it’s a great favour; the worn overcoat with ragged lining they gave you when winter came binds you in eternal gratitude. You come to know all the black moods of all these people with whom you sit at table, all their shop-worn opinions, their phrases and hypocritical expressions; and for the necessary hour of each day you must learn to practise its special kind of dissembling. That is the meaning of meal days.”

He got up, walked to and fro, and resumed his seat. “The devil appeared to me early,” he said in a hollow voice. “Perhaps I took a certain experience of my childhood more grievously to heart than others, perhaps the poison of it filtered deeper into me. But you cannot forget. It is graven upon my soul that my drunken father beat my mother. He did it every Saturday night with religious regularity. That image is not to be obliterated.”

Christian did not take his eyes from the face of Amadeus.

Softly, and with a rigid glance, Voss continued: “One night before Easter, when I was eight years old, he beat her again. I rushed into the yard, and cried out to the neighbours for help. Then I looked up at the window, and I saw my mother stand there wringing her hands in despair. And she was naked.” And his voice almost died into silence as he added: “Who is it that dare see his own mother naked?”

Again he arose and wandered about the room. He was so full of himself that his speech seemed indeed addressed to himself alone. “Two things there are that made me reflect and wonder even in my childhood. First, the very many poor creatures, whom my father reported because they stole a little wood, and who were put in prison. I often heard some poor, little old woman or some ragged half-starved lad beg for mercy. There was no mercy here. My father was the forester, and had to do his duty. Secondly, there were the many rich people who live in this part of the country in their castles, on their estates, in their hunting-lodges, and to whom nothing is denied that their wildest impulses demand. Between the two one stands as between two great revolving cylinders of steel. One is sure to be crushed to bits in the end.”

For a while he gazed into emptiness. “What is your opinion of an informer?” he asked, suddenly.

Christian answered with a forced smile: “It’s not a good one.”

“Listen to me. In the seminary I had a fellow-student named Dippel. His gifts were moderate, but he was a decent chap and a hard worker. His father was a signalman on the railroad--one of the very poor, and his son was his one hope and pride. Dippel happened to be acquainted with a painter in whose studio he came across an album of photographs displaying the female form in plastic poses. The adolescent boy gazed at them again and again, and finally begged the painter to lend him the album. Dippel slept in my dormitory. I was monitor, and I soon observed the crowding and the sensuous atmosphere about Dippel, who had shown the pictures to a few friends. It was like a spreading wound. I went into the matter and ruthlessly confiscated the pictures. I informed the faculty. Dippel was summoned, sternly examined, and expelled. Next day we found him swinging dead from the apple tree.”

Christian’s face flushed hotly. The tone of equanimity with which it was recited was more repulsive than the story itself.

Amadeus Voss continued: “You think that was a contemptible action. But according to the principles that had been impressed on us I was merely doing my duty. I was sixteen; and I seemed to be, and was, in a dark hole. I needed to get out to the air and light. I was like one squeezed in by a great throng, who cannot see what happens beyond. The fumes of impatience throttled me, and everything in me cried out for space and light. It was like living on the eternally dark side of the moon. I was afraid of the might of evil; and all that I heard of men was more or less evil. The scales rose and fell in my breast. There are hours in which one can either become a murderer or die on the cross. I yearned for the world. Yet I prayed much in those days, and read many books of devotion, and practised cruel penances. Late at night, when all others slept, a priest found me absorbed in prayer with the hair-shirt about my body. During mass or choral singing an incomparable and passionate devotion streamed through me. But then again I saw flags in the streets of the city, or well-dressed women, or I stood in the railway station, and a train of luxurious cars seemed to mock me. Or I saw a man who had hurled himself out of a window and whose brains spattered the pavement, and he seemed to cry out to me: Brother, brother! Then the evil one arose in bodily form and I desired to clutch him. Yes, evil has bodily form and only evil--injustice, stupidity, lying, all the things that are repulsive to one to the very core, but which one must embrace and be, if one has not been born with a silver spoon in one’s mouth. To save a ray of light for myself, I learned to play the organ. It helped little. What does music matter, or poems or beautiful pictures, or noble buildings, or books of philosophy, or the whole magnificent world without? I cannot reach myself. Between me and that real self there is something--what is it? A wall of red-hot glass. Some are accursed from the beginning. If I ask: how could the curse be broken? there is but one answer: the monstrous would need to come to pass, the unimaginable! Thus it is with me.”

Christian was shocked. “What do you mean by that?”

“One would have to gain a new experience,” answered Amadeus Voss, “to know a being truly human--in the highest and deepest sense.” In the gathering dusk his face had the hue of stone. It was a well-shaped face--long, narrow, intelligent, full of impassioned suffering. The lenses in front of his eyes sparkled in the last light of day, and on his fair hair was a glimmer as upon jewels.

“Are you going to stay in the village?” Christian inquired, not from a desire to know, but out of the distress which he felt in the heavy silence. “You were employed by Councillor Ribbeck. Will you return to him?”

Voss’s nerves twitched. “Return? There is no return,” he murmured. “Do you know Ribbeck? Well, I hardly know him myself. I saw him just twice. The first time was when he came to the seminary to engage a tutor for his sons. When I think of him I have the image of something fat and frozen. I was picked out at once. My superiors approved of me highly and desired to smooth my path. Yes. And I saw him for the second time one night in December, when he appeared at Halbertsroda with a commissary of police to put me out. You needn’t look at me that way. There were no further consequences. It wouldn’t have done to permit any.”

He fell silent. Christian got up. Voss did not urge him to stay longer, but accompanied him to the door. There he said in a changed voice: “What kind of a man are you? One sits before you and pours out one’s soul, and you sit there in silence. How does it happen?”

“If you regret it I shall forget all you have said,” Christian answered in his flexible, courteous way, that always had a touch of the equivocal.

Voss let his head droop. “Come in again when you are passing,” he begged gently. “Perhaps then I’ll tell you about what happened there!” He pointed with his thumb across his shoulder.

“I shall come,” said Christian.

XII

Albrecht Wahnschaffe came into his wife’s bedroom. She was in bed. It was a magnificent curtained bed with carved posters. On both sides of the wall hung costly tapestries representing mythological scenes. A coverlet of blue damask concealed Frau Wahnschaffe’s majestic form.

Gallantly he kissed the hand which she held out toward him with a weary gesture, and glided into an armchair. “I want to talk to you about Christian,” he said. “For some time his doings have worried me. He drifts and drifts. The latest thing is his purchase of that diamond. There is a challenge in such an action. It annoys me.”

Frau Wahnschaffe wrinkled her forehead, and answered: “I see no need to worry. Many sons of wealthy houses pass their time as Christian does. They are like noble plants that need adornment. They seem to me to represent a high degree of human development. They regard themselves quite rightly as excellent within themselves. By birth and wealth they are freed from the necessity of effort. Their very being is in their aristocratic aloofness and inviolability.”

Albrecht Wahnschaffe bowed. He played with his slender white fingers that bore no sign of age. He said: “I’m sorry that I cannot quite share your opinion. It seems to me that in the social organism each member should exercise a function that serves the whole. I was brought up with this view, and I cannot deny it in favour of Christian. I am not inclined to quarrel with his mere expenditure of money, though he has exceeded his budget considerably during the last few months. The house of Wahnschaffe cannot be touched even by such costly pranks. What annoys me is the aimlessness of such a life, its exceedingly obvious lack of any inner ambition.”

From under her wearily half-closed lids Frau Wahnschaffe regarded her husband coolly. It angered her that he desired to draw Christian, who had been created for repose and play, delight and beauty, into his own turbid whirl. She answered with a touch of impatience: “You have always let him choose his own path, and you cannot change him now. All do not need to toil. Business is terribly unappetizing. I have borne two sons--one for you, one for myself. Demand of yours what you will and let him fulfil what he can. I like to think of mine and be happy in the thought that he is alive. If anything has worried me it is the fact that, since his trip to England, Christian has withdrawn himself more and more from us, and also, I am told, from his friends. I hope it means nothing. Perhaps there is a woman behind it. In that case it will pass; he does not indulge in tragic passions. But talking exhausts me, Albrecht. If you have other arguments, I beg you to postpone them.”

She turned her head aside, and closed her eyes in exhaustion. Albrecht Wahnschaffe arose, kissed her hand with the same gallant gesture, and went out.

But her saying that she had borne one son for him and one for herself embittered him a little against his wife, whom he commonly regarded as an inviolable being of finer stuff. Why did I build all this? he asked himself, as he slowly passed through the magnificent halls.