Part 23

Dr. Voltolini continued: “Until two years ago I practised at Riedberg, near Freiwaldau, in Austrian Silesia. The town is several miles from the frontier of Prussia. Quite near it medicinal springs were discovered. It became a health resort of increasing popularity, and I and my family gradually attained a modest prosperity. But in the beginning of the summer of 1905 it happened that the wife of a cottager was attacked by typhoid fever, and I, according to my sworn duty, reported the case to the health authorities. Several citizens wanted to prevent my action. Even the commission on sanitation, whose chairman was mayor of the town, raised objections, and represented to me how the guests would be scared away for a long time and the town get a bad name. I told them I was acting in the interests of every one and could not be deterred by merely material considerations. First they besought and finally threatened me, but I remained firm.

“The first consequence was that a regiment, which had been ordered to Riedberg, and whose being stationed there would have been profitable to the town, was sent elsewhere. The panic that had been feared among the guests in the hotels did break out, and most of them fled. And now a wretched stream of abuse was poured out over me, and every one raged against me in the filthiest terms. The men did not respond to my greeting on the street. The butcher and baker and dairyman refused to sell their goods to my wife. Daily I received anonymous letters; you can imagine their character. My windows were smashed; no one came to my consultation hours, no patient dared to summon me. The fees that people owed me were not paid, and suspicions and slanders arose, ranging from silly talk to the vilest insinuations.

“Finally I was discharged from my office of district physician. I appealed to the National Medical Association, which in its turn appealed to the highest authorities. The town council and the sanitary commission were both dissolved by the governor of the province, the mayor was removed from office, my own dismissal revoked, and an escort of gendarmes despatched to the town to protect me and mine from violence. The trouble was that my situation was as bad as ever. The government could protect me from bodily hurt, but it could neither give me back my practice nor force my old patients to pay what they owed me. I was ruined. In the course of five months I brought twenty-one suits of slander and won every case. But I was more discouraged each time. It became clear that I could not stay at Riedberg. But where was I to go--a country doctor without private means, with a wife and children and, a feeble, aged mother to support? How was I to silence the slanderers, wash off the stain, and heal the inner hurt? I had no friend there who could lend me support; from the consolations of my wife there came to me only the voice of her own despair.

“I broke down completely. For eleven months I lay in a hospital. With unexampled energy my wife was busy during this period founding a new home for us and finding a new field of activity for me. I received permission to practise in Germany, and began life anew. Although I had lost faith both in my own powers and in mankind, my soul gradually grew calm again. Our circumstances are the most modest; but in this great city it is possible to be alone and to prevent the interference of strangers. For a long time I could practise my profession only if I forgot that my patients were human. I had to regard them as mechanisms that were to be repaired. Their pain and sorrow I passed over, and I hated to notice either. Do you understand that? Do you understand my coldness and contempt?”

“After all your experiences I can well understand it,” Christian answered. “But I believe your standpoint is no longer the same. Am I right? It seems to me that a change has taken place in you.”

“Yes, a change has taken place,” Dr. Voltolini admitted. “And it began----” He stopped and cast an unobtrusive glance at his companion. After a pause he said timidly: “Why did you smile that day when the Schirmacher girl showed you her ring? Do you remember? You may, of course, reply: it was natural to smile, for the stone which delighted her so was quite worthless, and yet to disillusion her would have been cruel. And yet your smile didn’t express that. It expressed something else.”

Christian said: “I really don’t remember precisely. I do remember the ring and the girl’s pleasure in it, but I can’t tell you to-day just why I smiled. It would have been better, by the way, if the girl had been less happy. A few days later she lost the ring, and the poor thing cried for hours. It would have been better if I had said to her: ‘Neither the ring nor the stone is worth anything.’ I should have told her to throw it away. On such occasions it is almost always better to say to people, ‘Throw it away.’ Perhaps I smiled because that is what I wanted to say and didn’t have the courage.”

“That’s how it looked,” Dr. Voltolini said quickly and with a touch of excitement. “That’s the impression I had.”

“Why speak of it?” Christian said.

They had reached the house on Stolpische Street. Niels Heinrich, who had followed them, disappeared among the vehicles on the street.

Dr. Voltolini looked at the pavement, and said with embarrassment and hesitation: “You could do a great deal for me in the sense you suggested, if I might call on you every now and then. It sounds strange and like a confession of weakness, coming from a man of my years to one of yours. I can’t justify my request, but I know I should be helped. I would get on and be more reconciled to my fate and work harder at the re-establishment of my life.” His eyes were turned tensely to Christian’s face.

Christian lowered his head, and after some reflection answered: “Your request is very flattering. I should be glad to serve you; I hope I may. But in order not to put you off with empty phrases, I should tell you that I shall be deeply preoccupied in the immediate future--not only inwardly, I am always that, but outwardly too. I am confronted with a difficult task--a terribly difficult task.”

Struck by Christian’s terrible seriousness Dr. Voltolini said: “I don’t mean to be inquisitive. But may I ask what that task is?”

“To find the man who murdered Ruth Hofmann.”

“How?” The physician was utterly astonished. “But I thought that the ... murderer had been arrested.”

Christian shook his head. “It is not the right man,” he said, softly but with assurance. “I saw him. I saw him when he appeared before the investigating judge. I knew him before the crime too. He is not the murderer.”

“That sounds strange,” said Dr. Voltolini. “Is that merely your personal opinion, or do the authorities also----?”

“It’s not an opinion,” Christian said meditatively. “Perhaps it’s more, perhaps it’s less--quite as one chooses. I don’t know what the authorities suspect. Undoubtedly they consider Joachim Heinzen the murderer. He has confessed, but I consider his confession false.”

“Did you express that opinion before the judge?”

“No. How could I have done that? I haven’t even a legitimate suspicion. Only I know that the man who is now held is not the murderer.”

“But how do you expect to find the real criminal, if you haven’t even a suspicion?”

“I don’t know, but I must do it.”

“You ... you must? What does that mean?”

Christian did not answer. He raised his eyes and held out a friendly hand to Dr. Voltolini. “And so, if you should come and not find me, don’t be angry at me. We shall meet again.”

The doctor clasped his hand firmly and silently.

Christian went into the house and up to Karen’s rooms. Fifteen minutes later Niels Heinrich mounted the same stairs.

XI

A fleck of sunlight trembled on the opposite wall of the courtyard. Its reflection lighted up the mirror over the leather sofa. A feeble fire was burning in the oven. Before going to the funeral Johanna Schöntag had thrown in a few small shovelfuls of coal. The fire crackled a little, but the room was growing cold.

Michael Hofmann sat in front of the chessboard. The student Lamprecht had set him a problem, and Michael stared at the board and the chessmen. Occasionally his thoughts converged in a will to find a solution, then they went wandering again. He had now succeeded in turning his mind toward outward things sufficiently to remember the chessmen and their positions. Even in the darkness of the night, during which he slept but rarely, he saw the figures of the two kings.

The fleck of sunshine sank lower on the wall, and the snow on the pavement glittered. Michael looked out through the window, and the gleaming of the snow caused his eyes to move. The whiteness--why did it torment him? He wanted to wipe it out or blow it away or cover it. Whiteness was a lie.

He got up and walked through the room. The glitter of the sunlight came insolently from the whiteness, and the room was filled with its lying shimmer. He hated it.

He stopped and listened and his eyelids twitched. Something floated before his mind, knocked at its door--not so much a forgotten thing as one suppressed and throttled. From his trousers pocket he drew forth a round, tightly-rolled, blackish brown object. He looked at it and began to shudder. For a moment his eyes had the same brooding look as when he regarded the chessmen. Then his fingers grew restless, and, growing paler and paler, he sought to unroll the object in his hand. It was a cloth, a handkerchief. Once it had been white; now it was drenched in blood.

It had been white, but now it was black with blood; and the blood had congealed so that the cloth had the toughness of leather and was hard to unfold. At last the surface appeared, and in one corner of it the embroidered initials, R. H.

“Whiteness is evil and redness is evil,” Michael whispered to himself, with the look of a beaten dog. He was struggling with a temptation, hunting for a way out, and all his being spoke of despair. He looked about him, hurried to the oven, opened the little iron door, and threw in the blood-drenched handkerchief. When the swift flame flared up he sighed with relief, and stood still and quivering.

XII

No one was in the rooms. The bed in which Karen had died had been taken away.

Christian walked up and down for a while. Then he sat down beside the table and rested his head on his hand. He thought: “Ruth has summoned Karen, as she will summon many more. What is the world without Ruth? For Ruth was the kernel and the soul of all things. And what is it that happened to Ruth, what really happened? Something unspeakably horrible, immeasurably depraved, but also impenetrably mysterious. To fathom it, one must subordinate every other feeling and occupation, all delight, all pain, all plans, and even eating and sleeping and seeing.”

He reflected over the confusion that Karen’s death had created within him. There was so much empty space about him since she was gone. The empty space cried out after her and was not to be silenced. No mournfulness arose that was not reluctant. Her existence had been as violent and garish as a burning mountain. The earth had swallowed the mountain, and in its place stretched a great waste.

Steps resounded, the door opened, and Niels Heinrich came in.

He nodded contemptuously toward the table at which Christian sat. He had pushed his bowler hat far back and kept it on his head. He looked about like some one examining quarters that had been advertised to be let. He walked into the second room, came back, stood impudently in front of Christian, and made a grimace.

“What do you want?” Christian asked.

He had come for Karen’s things, Niels Heinrich announced. The widow had sent him. He always called his mother that. His falsetto voice penetrated to every corner of the room. Everything of Karen’s would have to be handed over to him, he said, and counted and taken away.

Very calmly Christian said: “I shall not hinder you. Do as you please.”

Niels Heinrich whistled softly through his teeth. He turned around and saw Karen’s wooden box standing in a corner. He pulled it into the middle of the room. It was locked. First he struck it with his fist, then with his heel. Christian said it was not necessary to use force; Isolde Schirmacher had the key. Rudely Niels Heinrich swung around, and asked whether the pearls were in it. As Christian was silent in his surprise, the other added with growing irritation that the widow had told him a long story about a rope of pearls the size of pigeon’s eggs. He wanted to know who’d inherit those? Undoubtedly they’d belonged to Karen, had been given to her, in fact. Who’d inherit them, he’d like to know! Surely the family who were the rightful heirs. He hoped there’d be no damned nonsense on that point.

“You are mistaken,” Christian said coldly. “The pearls did not belong to Karen. They belong to my mother, and I am bound by a promise to return them. At the first opportunity I shall send them to Frankfort.”

Niels Heinrich stood quite still for a while, and a green rage seethed in his eyes. “Is that so?” he said finally. The gentleman wanted to liquidate the firm now, did he? First take a poor, stupid wench and trick her out and make a fool of her year in and year out, and then, when she was gone, not even put up something decent for her mourning family. Well, the gentleman needn’t think he’d get off so cheaply as long as he, Niels Heinrich, was on deck. And if the gentleman didn’t come across with a good pile of shekels, he’d live to see something that’d surprise him; he’d find out, so sure’s his name was Niels Heinrich Engelschall. He laughed a short harsh laugh and spread out his legs.

“I know who you are, and I’m not afraid of you,” said Christian, with an almost cheerful expression.

Niels Heinrich was taken aback. His glance, which had grown unsteady, fell upon Christian’s delicate, narrow, cultivated hands. Suddenly he looked at his own hands, holding them out and spreading the fingers apart. This gesture interested Christian immensely, though he could not account for the source of his interest. The whole man fascinated him suddenly from a point of view which he had never before assumed; and it was solely due to this curious gesture. Niels Heinrich observed this and was startled anew.

Was that all, he asked, that the gentleman had to say? His mood was menacing now. The gentleman could speak fine High German, he went on, that was sure. But if necessary, he, Niels Heinrich, could do as much. Why not? But if a man was a man of family, and especially of a family where they breed millions the way common folks breed rabbits--well, it was shabby to try to sneak off like a cheat in an inn. He wasn’t going to insist on the pearls, although he didn’t like to decide how much of a pretence and a hypocrisy this story of lending them was. No gentleman would do such things. But some compensation--he did demand that, he’d insist on it, he owed that to his own honour; and his late sister, if the truth were known, would have expected that much.

Again he regarded his hands.

Christian looked at him attentively, and replied: “You are mistaken in this too. I have no money at my disposal. My liberty of action, so far as money is concerned, is more restricted than your own, more so than that of any one who earns his bread by his own work.” He interrupted himself as he observed Niels Heinrich’s incredulously jeering smile. The spiritual vulgarity in that smile was overwhelming.

He could take no stock in those stories, Niels Heinrich answered; no, not if he was to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. If the gentleman would tell him what was behind it all, maybe he’d believe it. To do a thing like that a man must have bran in his head. If the gentleman would tell him the real facts, maybe he’d be able to see light. He’d gladly believe that there was something behind it all. Nobody could tell, of course, what sort of things the gentleman had on his conscience; so his Papa and Mama wouldn’t budge with the brass, and he told elegant stories. But one might make things pretty lively for the gentleman. There were a good many people, not only in Stolpische Street but elsewhere, who didn’t think the gentleman’s love affair with the murdered Jewess all straight and aboveboard. He, Niels Heinrich, knew a thing or two; other people knew other things, the gentleman himself knew a damned lot more than he showed, and he’d have to own up if things got serious. All one’d have to do was to give a hint to the right people, and the gentleman would find himself more clearly described in the newspapers than he had so far. His name’d be coupled with the name of that bloodhound Joachim Heinzen. Then the fat would be in the fire, or, to use the gentleman’s manner of speech, he’d be irretrievably compromised.

In Christian’s expression there did not appear the faintest trace of indignation or disgust. He sat there with lowered eyes, as though reflecting how he could answer most pertinently and objectively. Then he said: “Your hidden threats frighten me no more than your open ones. I do not care in the least where my name is mentioned or under what circumstances, whether it be spoken or written or printed. No one’s opinion or attitude has any influence on me, not even theirs who were once closest to me. So that is the third error which you have made. There is no basis in reality to anything you have said, least of all in your references to my friendship with Ruth Hofmann. No one knows anything about it, and I have spoken to no one; nor did Ruth do so, I am sure. By what right do you pass a judgment on it, and so shameful a one too? You have no suspicion how infinitely far from the truth it is. And yet it surprises me that you expect it to be effective, that you expect so false and empty an accusation to wound or frighten me. But won’t you sit down? You’re standing there in such a hostile attitude. There’s no occasion for enmity between us; I meant to tell you that long ago. If there’s anything concerning your late sister or myself that you want to know, I shall be glad to inform you. In return, I’d like to ask you to answer me a few questions too. Do sit down.” He pointed courteously to a chair.

These words, with their calm and their courtesy, amazed Niels Heinrich to the utmost. He had been prepared for tempestuous anger, a proud and irate repulse, for the customary counter-threat that veiled attempts at blackmail are wont to receive, for consternation, possibly for fear. But he was not prepared for this courtesy. It was so fundamentally different from anything that he had met with among men, that his eyes stared in stupid astonishment for a while, as though they saw an irresponsible moron whose behaviour was half absurd and half suspicious. He grasped the chair and sat down on it--half-crouching, ready for an attack or any mischief.

“The gentleman talks like a lawyer,” he jeered. “You could make a success at the bar. What do you want to ask me anyhow? Fire away! Don’t you have no fear. And seeing as how you talk so educated, I can polish my rough snout too. I ain’t without education myself. I don’t have to take nothing from no one. I even had a spell at a gymnasium once. The widow had ambitions in her day.”

Suddenly his mockery sounded pained and forced. He bit on the iron of his chain.

“You mentioned Joachim Heinzen a moment ago,” Christian said. “You called him a bloodhound. Is that your real opinion of him? You and he were very constant companions, and you must have a fairly accurate knowledge of his character. Do you really think he was capable of having committed the murder? Please consider your answer carefully for a moment; a great deal depends on it. Why do you look at me like that? What is it?” Involuntarily Christian arose, for the look that Niels Heinrich fixed on him was literally frightful.

Niels Heinrich arose at the same moment and almost shrieked. Why ask him such fool questions? What in hell did he mean by ’em? A cardboard box lay on the table; he picked it up and hurled it down on the floor. Becoming aware of the imprudence of his outburst and regretting it, he laughed his goat-like laugh. Then stealthily, with colourless, furtive eyes he went on. Why shouldn’t Heinzen be capable of the crime? He said he’d done it and he ought to know. How did the gentleman come to stick his nose into such affairs? Maybe he was a police spy or something? He tried to steady his lightless, furtive eyes in vain. But the slack muscles of his face began to grow taut again as he continued: “I know the feller. Sure, I know him. But you never know what any one is capable of till he does it. I didn’t have no notion that he carried about a plan like that. The devil must’ve gotten into him; he must’ve swallowed poison. But I told him often enough: ‘You ain’t going to come to no good end.’” He stuck his fists in his trousers pockets, took a few steps, and leaned boastfully against the oven.

Christian approached him. “It is my impression that Heinzen lies,” he said calmly. “He lied to the judge, he lied to himself. He doesn’t realize the nature of what he says or does or accuses himself of. Don’t you share the opinion that his mind is wholly confused? Assuredly he is but the tool of some one else. Some frightful pressure must have been exerted on him, and under its weight he made statements so incriminating that he became hopelessly enmeshed. Unless a miracle happens or the real criminal is discovered, he is lost.”

Niels Heinrich’s neck seemed thin as a stalk. His Adam’s apple slid strangely up and down. His skin was white; only his ears were red as raw beef. “Would you be so kind as to tell me, my dear fellow, in what way this whole matter concerns you?” he asked, in his brittle falsetto and with an unexpected abandonment of his gutter jargon, of which he retained only the sharp, staccato rhythm. “What conclusions are you trying to draw? What are you aiming at? And how the devil does it all concern me? Perhaps you’ll have the kindness to explain.”

“It concerns you,” Christian answered, breathing deeply, “because you associated constantly with Joachim Heinzen, and so you ought to be in a position to give me a hint. You must have some definite thoughts of your own on the matter; in one way or another it must touch you. It is my unalterable conviction that Heinzen is not and cannot be the murderer, but I am equally convinced that he has acted under the influence of the real culprit, so the latter must be among those with whom Heinzen associated. Now I cannot imagine that this individual failed to concentrate upon himself the attention of all his acquaintances, for he must be a man who is essentially different from the others. It only confirms my opinion of him that he has so far escaped the arm of justice. But he must be known; a man who was capable of that deed could not be overlooked. And that is why I turn to you. If you had not come to me, I would have gone to you.”

Niels Heinrich grinned. “Awf’ly good of you,” he said, with contorted lips. “I’d’ve been tickled to death.” Oppression and rending excitement betrayed themselves in his convulsively raised brows. He tried to control himself, and yet stammered as he continued: “Is that so? So that’s your conviction--unalterable conviction, eh? And where do you get that conviction, I’d like to ask, eh? Why shouldn’t he have killed her, seeing as how he confessed in court? Why not, eh? Nobody made him say it. This is all dam’ nonsense; you just simply dreamed this business or you was drunk. What made you think of it?”