Part 15

“You see--it is your race. It is, I do not deny it, the same race which I have always.... Well, it’s speaking mildly to say that I’ve always hated the Jews. Merely to scent a Jew was always to me like having an explosive stuck into my nerves. An immemorial crime is symbolized there, an ancient guilt; the Crucified One sighs across lands and ages to my ear. My blood rebels against the noblest of your race. It may be that I am the tool of an age-long lie; it may be that he who lacks the love that makes a priest acquires the stupidity and intolerance that mark the parson; it may be that our apparent enemies shall prove at last to be our brothers, and that Cain and Abel will clasp hands on Judgment Day. But it is part of my very being to nourish hatred when the roots of my life under the earth beyond my reach are crippled by the insolent growth of alien seedlings. And when one proposes to be my comrade and my neighbour, and yet meets me with the reserve of an alien soul--am I not to feel it and not to pay him back in the same coin? That is the way I’ve always felt. I never before knew a Jewish woman; and I cannot say that my feeling has undergone any essential change. Had it done so, I should suffer less. Oh, you are quite right to despise me on account of what I am saying; and, indeed, I am prepared to hear your contempt often. That is a part of my suffering. The first time I saw you I thought at once of Jephtha’s daughter. She was, you remember, sacrificed by her father, because she happened to be the first to welcome him on his return home; for he had made a vow, and his daughter came to meet him with cymbals and with dancing. It is a profound notion--that notion of sacrificing the first one who comes to bid you welcome. And she must have been sweet and dainty--the daughter of Jephtha. She is to-day--experienced in dreams; rash where it is a matter of mere dreams; spoiled, incapable of any deed, submerging all enthusiasm and initiative in an exquisite yearning. The long wealth gathered by her ancestors has made her faint-hearted. She loves music and all that flatters the senses--delicate textures and beautiful words. She loves also the things that arouse and sting, but they must neither burden nor bind her. She loves the shiver of fear and of small intoxications; she loves to be tempted, to challenge fate, to put her little hand into the tiger’s cage. But everything within her is delicate and in transition toward something--blossoming or decay. She is sensitive, without resistance, weary, and so full of subtle knowledge and various gropings that each desire in her negates another. Inbreeding has curdled her blood, and even when she laughs her face is touched with pain. And one day her father Jephtha, Judge in Israel, returns, home and sacrifices her. Oh, I am sure he went mad after that.”

Johanna’s face was as pale as death. “That, I suppose, was a lesson in your admired science of psychiatry?” She forced herself to mockery.

Voss did not answer.

“Good-bye, you learned man.” She walked to the door.

Voss followed her. “When are you coming again?” he asked softly.

She shook her head.

“When are you coming again?”

“Don’t torment me.”

“Wahnschaffe will be here the day after to-morrow. Will you come?”

“I don’t know.”

“Johanna, will you come?” He stood before her with uplifted hands, and the muscles of his cheeks and temples twitched.

“I don’t know.” She went out.

But he knew that she would come.

XIII

Between the acts of a dress rehearsal Lorm and Emanuel Herbst walked up and down in the foyer, discussing Lorm’s rôle. “Hold yourself a little more in reserve.” Herbst talked slightly through his nose. “And at the climax of the second act I expected a somewhat stronger emphasis. There’s nothing else to criticize.”

“Very well,” said Lorm drily. “I’ll stick on a little more grease-paint.”

Many of the invited guests also walked through the curved passage way. Admiring glances followed Lorm. A girl approached him determinedly. She had evidently struggled with herself. She handed him a bunch of carnations, and silently withdrew, frightened by her own temerity.

“How nice of you!” Lorm exclaimed with kindliness, and stuck his nose into the flowers.

“Well, you old reveller, do the broken hearts taste as well as ever?” Herbst asked mockingly. “One is served at breakfast, too, isn’t it? Or more than one? It makes an old codger like me feel sad.”

“You can get too much of a good thing,” said Lorm. “The poor dears go to excesses. Yes, early in the morning one will be trying to bribe the house attendants. When my chauffeur appears they flutter about him. Many of them know how I’ve planned my day and turn up at unexpected places--in an art dealer’s shop, at my photographer’s studio. I’ve been told of one poor girl who spent nights promenading in front of the house. When I was on tour there was one who followed me from town to town. And then there are all those unhappy letters. The amount of feeling that goes to waste, the confessions that are made, the intricate problems that are presented--you would be astonished. And all make the same naïve presumptions. I shouldn’t care very greatly if this whole business didn’t have its serious aspect. All these young creatures put their capital into an undertaking doomed to failure. It’s bound to revenge itself. Clever people say that it doesn’t matter what the young are enthusiastic about, if only they’re enthusiastic about something. It isn’t true. Decent young people shouldn’t rave about an actor. Don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean to belittle our profession; it has its definite merits. I don’t want to display any false modesty about myself either. I know precisely what I am. The point is that those young people do not. They want me to be what I only represent. That is the height of absurdity. No, decent young people shouldn’t adore an actor who is only a caricature of a hero.”

“Well, well, well,” said Emanuel Herbst, in a tone of soothing irony. “You’re too severe and too pessimistic. I know a few rather authoritative persons who sincerely assign to you quite a high position among mortals. I’ll not mention immortals in deference to your mood. And in your really lucid moments you’re proud of your position, which is quite as it should be. What attitude does your wife take to your attacks of hypochondria? Doesn’t she scold you?”

“It seems to me,” Lorm said impassively, “that Judith has arrived on the other shore of her disillusion. In this dispute she would hardly take your side. My convictions have fallen on fertile ground in her case.”

Emanuel Herbst rocked his head from side to side and protruded his nether lip. Lorm’s tone made him anxious. “How is she anyhow?” he asked. “I haven’t seen her for a long time. I heard she was ill.”

“It’s hard to say how she is,” Lorm answered. “Ill? No, she wasn’t ill, although she did spend a great deal of time in bed. There are a few middle-class women who’ve formed a kind of court about her. They give her all their time, and she’s trained them marvellously. She says she’s losing her slenderness, so she got a fashionable physician to prescribe a hunger cure. She follows the directions religiously. But my house is in splendid condition. Tip-top. Why shouldn’t it be? It’s cleaned to the last corner twice a week. The cuisine is excellent, and I’ve got some rather nice things in my cellar. You must come and try them.”

“All right, old man, you can count on me,” said Emanuel Herbst. But his anxiety for his friend had grown with each word that Lorm had uttered. He knew that coldness which hid the most quivering sensitiveness, that princely smoothness beneath which great wounds were bleeding, that indeterminate element which was half spiritual malady, half an ascetic impulse. He was afraid of the destruction wrought by a worm in a noble fruit.

The signal sounded. A new act began. From the stage that voice of steel exerted its compelling resonance once more.

XIV

Johanna did come.

She had waited until it was quite late, in order to avoid waiting for Christian alone with Voss. When, after, all, she found only Voss, she could not conceal her contempt. Her vexation made her face look old and peaked.

The weather was cold and wet. She sat down near the oven and put her hands against the tiles. She did not take off her coat. It was an ample, fur-trimmed garment with large buttons. She looked in it like a thin and hiding child. Nor did she raise her veil, which extended rather tautly from her wide-brimmed hat to her chin and accentuated the whiteness of her skin.

“You lied to me,” she said harshly. “It was mere bait. You knew he wouldn’t be here.”

Voss answered: “What you have just said relegates me pretty clearly to a mere means to an end. What do you expect of a meeting with him anyhow? What is it to serve? Is it to revive memories or give the opportunity for an explanation? No, I know you’re not fond of explanations. You like tension, provided your way of escape is ready for you. Very clever. I am to be at once the opportunity and the way of escape. Very clever. But why don’t you simply go to him? Because, of course, you don’t want to assume the psychical obligation implied in such a step. It might look as though you meant something; you are not sure how it would be interpreted. Your cowardice is almost funny. When it’s convenient, you’re a sensitive plant; when it’s not, you’re quite capable of putting your heel on some defenceless neck.”

“This is intolerable,” Johanna cried, and arose. “Don’t you know that my being here compromises me more, especially in my own eyes, than anything else I could do?”

Voss was frightened. “Calm yourself,” he said, and touched her arm. Recoiling from his touch she sank back into her chair. “Calm yourself,” Voss repeated. “He promised definitely to be here; but he has many errands nowadays and has to meet many people and is constantly on the way from one place to another.”

Johanna tormented herself. She was an experienced expert at it. She was glad when things went ill with her, when her hopes failed, when she was insulted or misunderstood. She was glad when the silk stocking into which she slipped her foot tore, when ink dropped on her paper, when she missed a train or found something for which she had paid generously prove worthless. It was a bitter, mischievous gladness, such as one feels at the absurd downfall of a hated rival.

It was this feeling that made her smile now. “I’m a charming creature, am I not?” she said, with a bizarre look and gesture.

Voss was disconcerted.

“Tell me about him,” she said, half-defiantly, half-resignedly, and again pressed her hands against the tiles.

Amadeus looked upon her hands, which were bluish with cold. “You are cold,” he murmured. “You are always cold.”

“Yes, I’m always cold. There’s not enough sunshine for me.”

“People say that foundlings never get really warm; but you are no foundling. I imagine, on the contrary, that your childhood was a hotbed of carefulness. Undoubtedly the rooms were overheated, and hot-water bottles were put into your bed at night, and tonics were prescribed. Yet your soul froze all the more as the attempt was made to reach it through material things. You are no foundling in the body; your bourgeois descent is clear. But your soul is probably a foundling soul. There are such souls. They flutter yearningly up and down in space between heaven and hell, and their fate depends on whether an angel or a demon assigns them their earthly tabernacle. Most of them get into the wrong bodies. They are so anxious for a mortal form that they usually fall into the hands of a demon to whom they are tributary all their lives. Such are the foundling souls.”

“Fantastic nonsense!” Johanna said. “You had better tell me something about him.”

“About him? As I told you before, he is concerned in many different things. The woman Karen is ill, and will probably not get better. It is her rightful reward; vice demands the payment of its debt. You can find the sword foretold for such in Scripture. Well, he nurses her; he watches with her at night. Then there is a Jewish girl who lives in the house. He goes about with her to all sorts of people--a kind of suburban saint. Only he doesn’t preach; preaching is not among his gifts. He is dumb, and that is a blessing. I have never sat so near to a woman,” he went on in precisely the same tone, so as to prevent her interrupting him, “never at least to one who makes me feel that her very existence is a good. And one is so damnably in need of something pure, so filled with terrible longing for a human eye--to know none other regards you as she does. Almighty God, to lose for once the curse of my isolation! What is it that I ask? It is so little! Only not to sicken of my rage and famish of my thirst; once to lay my head into a woman’s lap and feel nothing but the beloved night; and when the silence falls, to feel a hand in my hair and hear a word, a breath, and so to be redeemed!” His voice had grown softer and softer, and at last sank to a whisper.

“Don’t ... don’t ... don’t,” Johanna implored him, almost as softly. “Tell me about him,” she went on hastily. “Does he really live in complete poverty? One hears so many things. Last week I was invited by some people, and the company talked of nothing else. Impudent and stupid as these parvenus of yesterday always are, they fairly outdid themselves. They joked about him and pitied his family, or even suggested that the whole thing was an imposture. My gorge rose. But I ask you this one thing: Why haven’t I heard from you a single cordial word about him? Why nothing but venom and slander? You must know him. It is unthinkable that you really entertain the opinion of him by which you try to add to your self-importance in my eyes, and no doubt in the eyes of others. I assure you that there isn’t the remotest chance of our really becoming friends, unless you’re candid with me on this point.”

For a long time Voss was silent. First he passed his handkerchief across his damp forehead. Then, bending far forward, he leaned his chin upon his folded hands, and looked upward through his glasses as though he were listening. “Friendship,” he murmured in a sarcastic tone. “Friendship. I call that pouring water into the wine before the grapes have gone to the winepress.” After a pause he spoke again. “I am not called to be his judge. At the beginning of our acquaintance it was given me to behold him with astonishment upon his pedestal. I kneeled in the mud and lifted my eyes as to a demigod. Then I kindled a little fire, and there was considerable smoke. But I would be a liar to assert that he did not stir me to the innermost soul. At times he so mastered my evil and common instincts that when I was left alone I cast myself down and wept. But love surrounded him and hate surrounded me. Wherever he appeared love burst into bloom; whatever I touched turned upon me in hatred. Light and beauty and open hearts were about him; blackness and humiliation and blocked paths were my portion. All good spirits guarded him; I was fighting Satan, and out of my darkness crying to God, who cast me off. Ay, cast me off and rejected me, and set a mark of shame upon me, and pursued me ever more cruelly, as my self-humiliation deepened and my penitence grew tenser and my roots emerged more energetically from the earth. Then it came to pass that he recognized a brother in me. We passed an unforgettable night, and unforgettable words were exchanged between us. But love remained about him, and about me hate. He took my flame from me, and carried it to men; and love was about him, and about me was hate. He made a beggar of me, and gave me hundreds of thousands; and love was about him, and about me was hate. Do you think me so dull that I cannot measure his deeds or their heavy weight and cost? The consciousness of them steals into my sleep, and makes it terrible as an open wound, so that I lie as among stinging nettles without heaven or aspiration. Who would be so accursed a traitor to himself that he would neither hear nor see the truth when it roars like a flame of fire? But how about that brother in the dust? The contrast was easier to bear while he dwelt amid the splendours of the world. Now he goes and renounces, lives amid want and stench, nurses a woman of the streets and mingles with outcasts; and what is the result? Love grows about him like a mountain. It is necessary to have experienced and to have seen it. He comes into rooms out there, and all glances cling to him and touch him tenderly; and each creature seems fairer and better to itself while he is there. Is it magic? But that mountain of love crushes me where I lie.”

Again he dried his forehead. Johanna observed him attentively; at last an insight into his nature dawned in her.

“It is they who take the last step who are the chosen,” Amadeus Voss continued. “Those like myself stop at the step before the last, and that is our purgatory. Perhaps Judas Iscariot could have done what the Master did, but the Master preceded him, and that doomed him to crime. He was alone. That is the solution of his mystery: he was alone. Just now, before you came, I was reading in a book the story of the marriage of Saint Francis to the Lady Poverty. Do you know it? ‘Woe to him who is alone,’ it says there. ‘When he falls, he has no one to lift him up.’”

The book lay on the table. He took it up, and said: “Saint Francis had left the city, and met two old men. He asked them whether they could tell him the abode of Lady Poverty. Let me read you what the two old men answered.”

He read aloud: “We have been here for a long time, and we have often seen her passing along this road. Sometimes she was accompanied by many, and often she returned alone without any companions, naked, devoid of dress and adornment, and surrounded only by a little cloud. And she wept very bitterly, and said: ‘The sons of my mother have fought against me.’ And we made answer: ‘Have patience, for those who are good love thee.’ And now we say to thee: Climb that high mountain among the holy hills which God has given her as a dwelling-place because He loves it more than all the dwelling-places of Jacob. The giants cannot approach its paths nor the eagles reach its peak. If thou wouldst go to her, strip off thy costly garments, and lay down every burden and every occasion of sin. For if thou art not stripped of these things, thou wilt never rise to her who dwells upon so great a height. But since she is kind of heart, they who love her see her without trouble, and they who seek her find her with ease. Think of her, brother, for they who yield themselves to her are safe. But take with thee faithful companions, with whom thou mayest take counsel when thou climbest the mountain, and who may be thy helpers. For woe to him who is alone. When he falls he has no one to lift him up.”

His manner of reading tormented Johanna. There was a fanaticism in it from which her soul, attuned to semitones, shrank.

“Woe to him who is alone,” said Voss. He kneeled down before Johanna. All his limbs trembled. “Johanna,” he implored her, “give me your hand, only your hand, and have pity on me.”

Her will failed her. More in consternation than obedience, she gave him her hand, which he kissed with a devouring passion. What he did seemed blasphemous and desperate after his words and his reading; but she dared not withdraw her hand.

Her watchful ear caught a noise. “Some one is coming,” she whispered faintly. Voss arose. There was a knock at the door, and Christian entered.

He greeted them in a friendly way. His calm contrasted almost resonantly with Amadeus’s wild distraction, for Voss could not control himself wholly. While Christian sat down at the table with the lamplight full upon his face, and looked now at Johanna, now at Voss, the latter walked excitedly up and down, and said: “We have been talking about Saint Francis, Fräulein Johanna and I.”

Christian looked his surprise.

“I know nothing of him,” he said. “All I remember is that once in Paris, at Eva Sorel’s, some verses about him were read. Every one was delighted, but I didn’t like the poem. I have forgotten why, but I recall that Eva was very angry.” He smiled. “Why did you two talk about Saint Francis?”

“We were talking of his poverty,” replied Voss, “and of his marriage to the Lady Poverty, as the legend has it. And we agreed that such things must not be translated into actual life, for the result would be falsehood and misunderstanding....”

“We agreed about nothing,” Johanna interrupted him drily. “I am no support for any one’s opinions.”

“Never mind,” said Voss, somewhat depressed. “It is a vision, a vision born of the sufferings of religious souls. That poverty, that sacred poverty is unthinkable except upon a Christian foundation. Whoever would dare to attempt it, and to turn backward the overwhelming stream of life in a distorted world, amid distorted conditions, where poverty means dirt and crime and degradation--such an one would only create evil and challenge humanity itself.”

“That may be correct,” said Christian. “But one must do what one considers right.”

“It’s cheap enough to take refuge in the purely personal when general questions are discussed,” Voss said rancorously.

Johanna rose to say good-bye, and Christian prepared himself to follow her, since it was on her account that he had come. Voss said he would walk with them as far as Nollendorf Square. There he left them.

“It is hard for us to talk,” said Christian. “There is much for which I should ask you to forgive me, dear Johanna.”

“Oh,” said Johanna, “it doesn’t matter about me. I’ve conquered that. Unless I probe too deeply, even the pain is gone.”

“And how do you live?”

“As best I can.”

“You don’t mind my calling you Johanna still, do you? Won’t you come to see me some day? I’m usually at home in the evening. Then we could sit together and talk.”

“Yes, I’ll come,” said Johanna, who felt her own embarrassment yielding before Christian’s frank and simple tone.

While she was walking beside him and hearing and answering his direct and simple questions, all that had happened in the past seemed a matter of course, and the present seemed harmonious enough. But when she was alone again she was as vexed with herself as ever; the nearest goal seemed as irrational as the farthest, and the world and life shut in by dreariness.

Two days later she went to Christian’s dwelling. The wife of the night watchman Gisevius ushered her into Christian’s room. Shivering and oppressed by the room, in which she could not imagine him, she waited for over an hour. Frau Gisevius advised her to look in at Karen Engelschall’s or the Hofmanns’ flat. To this she could not make up her mind. “I’ll come again,” she said.

When she stepped out into the street she saw Amadeus Voss. He greeted her without words, and his expression seemed to take it for granted that they had agreed to meet here. He walked on at her side.

“I love you, Johanna,” he said.

She did not answer, nor turn her eyes toward him. She walked more swiftly, then more slowly, then more swiftly again.

“I love you, Johanna,” said Amadeus Voss, and his teeth rattled.

XV

On the alabaster mantelshelf candles were burning in the silver Renaissance candlesticks. The more salient light of the burning logs reached only far enough to envelop the figures of Eva and of Cornelius Ermelang in its glow. It did not penetrate as far as the porphyry columns or the gold of the ceiling. A dim, red flicker danced in the tall mirrors, and the purple damask curtains before the huge windows, which shut in the room more solemnly than the great doors, absorbed the remnants of light without reflection.