Not far from Hadebusch’s was a little café known as The Paradise. Everything in it was diminutive, the proprietor, the waitress, the tables, the chairs and the portions. There the brethren fromthe Vale of Tears assembled to drag the gods down into the dust and destroy the universe in general.
Daniel wended his way thither. He knew the liliputian room and the starved faces. He was personally acquainted with the painter who never painted, the writer who never wrote, the student who never studied, and the inventor who never invented anything. He knew all about the sculptor who squandered such talents as he may have had in tinkering with plaster casts, the actor who had been on a leave of absence for years, and the half dozen mendicant Philistines who came here day after day to have a good time in their own repelling fashion. He knew the young Baron von Auffenberg who had broken with his family for reasons that were clear to no one but himself. He knew Herr Carovius, who invariably played the rôle of the observer, and who sat there in a sort of mysterious fashion, smiling to himself a smile of languishing irony, and stroking his hand over his long hair, which was cut straight across at the back of his neck.
He knew, ah, he knew by heart, the grease spots on the walls that had been rubbed in by the heads of the habitués, the indelible splotches on the tables, the hartshorn buttons on the proprietor’s vest, and the smoke-coloured curtains draped about the tiny windows. The loud, boisterous talking, the daily repetition of the same hackneyed remarks, the anarchistic swashbuckling of the painter whom his comrades had dubbed Kropotkin—all of these were familiar stories to him. He knew the philosophic cynicism of the student who felt that he was the Socrates of the nineteenth century, and who looked back on twenty-five wasted semesters as on so many battles fought and won.
The most interesting personage was Herr Carovius. He was a well-read man. That he knew a great deal about music was plain from many of his chance remarks. He was a brother-in-law of Andreas Döderlein, though he seemed to take anything but pride in the relationship. If any one mentioned Döderlein’s name in his presence, he screwed up his face, and began to shuffle about uneasily on his chair. He was an unfathomable, impenetrable personality. Even if his years—he was forty-five—had not won for him a measure of esteem, the malicious and mordant scorn he heaped on his fellow-men would have done so. People said he had a good deal of money. If this was brought to his attention, he employed the most ghastly oaths in asserting his poverty. But since he had neither calling nor profession and spent his days in unqualified idleness, it was apparent that his assertions on this point werewholly unfounded, and this despite the virility of his unconventional language.
“Say, tell me, who is that lanky quack there?” asked Herr Carovius, pointing to Daniel and looking at Schwalbe the sculptor. He had known Daniel for a long while, but every now and then it gave him a peculiar kind of pleasure to play the rôle of the newcomer.
The sculptor looked at him indignantly.
“That is a man who still has faith in himself,” he remarked rather morosely. “He is a man who has bathed in the dragon blood of illusions, and has become as invulnerable as Young Siegfried. He is convinced that the people who sleep in the houses around this part of town dream of his future greatness, and have already placed an order with the green-grocer for his laurel wreath. He has not the faintest idea that the only thing that is sacred to them is their midday meal, that they are ready to drink their beer at the first stroke of the gong, and to yawn when the light appears on Mount Sinai. He is completely taken up with himself; he is sufficient unto himself; and he gathers honey. The bee will have its honey, and if it is unable to get it from the flowers, it buzzes about the dung heap. As is evidently the case here.PrositNothafft,” he said in conclusion, and lifted his glass to Daniel.
Herr Carovius smiled in his usual languishing fashion. “Nothafft,” he bleated, “Nothafft, Nothafft, that is a fine name, but not exactly one that is predestined to a niche in Walhalla. It strikes me as being rather more appropriate for the sign of a tailor. Good Lord! The bones the young people gnaw at to-day were covered with meat in my time.”
And then, clasping his glasses a bit firmer onto his nose, he riveted his blinking, squinting eyes on the door. Eberhard von Auffenberg, elegant, slender, and disgruntled, entered to find life where others were throwing it away.
It was far into the night when the brethren went home. As they passed along through the streets they bellowed their nocturnal serenades at the windows of the otherwise peaceful houses.
As the hilarious laughter and vocal rowdyism reached Daniel’s ear, he detected from out of the hubbub a gentle voice in E-flat minor, accompanied by the inexorable eighth-notes sung with impressive vigour. Then the voice died away in a solemn E-flat major chord, and everything was as if sunk in the bottom of the sea.
Toward the end of the summer, Philippina, Jason Philip’s daughter, shot out the eye of her seven-year-old brother with a so-called bean-shooter.
The children were playing in the yard. Willibald, the older boy, wanted the shooter. Philippina, who had not the slightest sense of humour, snatched it from his hands, placed the stone on the elastic band and let it fly with all her might. Little Marcus ran in front of it. It was all over in a jiffy. A heart-rending scream caused the frightened mother to leave the shop and run out into the yard. She found the child lying on the ground convulsed with pain. While Theresa carried the boy into the house, Jason Philip ran for the doctor. But it was too late; the eye was lost.
Philippina hid. After considerable search her father found her under the cellar steps. He beat her so mercilessly that the neighbours had to come up and take him away.
Little Marcus was Theresa’s favourite child. She could not get over the accident. The obsession that had slumbered in her soul for years now became more persistent than ever: she began to brood over guilt in general and this case in particular.
At times she would get up in the night, light a candle, and walk about the house in her stocking feet. She would look behind the stove and under the table, and then crouch down with her ear against the maid’s door. She would examine the mouse-trap and if a mouse had been caught in it, she could not, try as she might, completely detach her own unrest from the mental disturbance of the little beast.
One day Jason Philip was stopped on the street by a well-known cabinet-maker and asked whether he had any old furniture for sale. Jason Philip replied that he was not at all familiar with the contents of the attic and sent him to Theresa. Theresa recalled that there was an old desk up in the attic that had been standing there for years. She suggested that they might be willing to dispose of this for a few taler, and accompanied the man to the room where the worn-out furniture was stored.
She opened the little wooden door. The cabinet-maker caught sight at once of the desk. It had only three legs and was just about ready to fall to pieces. “I can’t make you an offer for that,” said the cabinet-maker, and began to rap on it here andthere, somewhat as a physician might sound a corpse. “The most I can offer you is twelve groschen.”
They haggled for a while, and finally agreed on sixteen. The man left at once, having promised to send one of his men up in the afternoon to get the desk. Theresa was already standing on the steps, when it occurred to her that it might be well to go through the drawers before letting the thing get out of the house: there might be some old documents in them. She went back up in the attic.
In the dust of one of the drawers she found, sure enough, a bundle of papers, and among them the receipt which Gottfried Nothafft had sent back to Jason Philip ten years before. She read in the indistinct light the confidential words of the deceased. She saw that Jason Philip had received three thousand taler.
After she had read this, she crumpled up the paper. Then she put it into her apron pocket and screamed out: “Be gone, Gottfried, be gone!”
She went down stairs into the kitchen. There she took her place by the table and stirred a mixture of flour and eggs, as completely absent-minded as it is possible for one to become who spends her time in that part of the house. Rieke, the maid, became so alarmed at her behaviour that she made the sign of the cross.
When the midday meal was over, the children left the table and prepared to go to school. Jason Philip lighted a cigar, and took the newspaper from his pocket.
“Did you find anything for the second-hand furniture man?” he asked, as he puffed away.
“I found something for him and something for myself,” she said.
“What do you mean? You found something for yourself?”
“What do I mean? I mean just what I said. I have always known that there was something crooked about that money.”
“What money are you talking about? Listen, don’t speak to me in riddles! When you have anything to say to me, say it. Do you understand?”
“I mean Gottfried Nothafft’s money, Jason Philip,” said Theresa, almost in a whisper.
Jason Philip bent over the table. “Then you have at last found the old receipt, have you?” he asked with wide-opened eyes.“Ahem! You have found the receipt that I’ve been looking for for years ...?”
Theresa nodded. She took out a hairpin, and stuck it in a crust of bread. Jason Philip got up, clasped his hands behind his back, and began to walk back and forth. Just then Rieke came in and began to clear off the table. She went about her business in a slow but noisy fashion. She made things rattle, even if she could not make them hum. When she was through, Jason Philip, his hands pressed to his hips, his elbows protruding, planted himself before Theresa.
“I suppose you think I am going to let you browbeat me,” he began. “Well, my dear woman, you’re mistaken. Listen! Are you angry at me because I have created for you and your children a dignified existence? Do you take it amiss of me for having kept your sister from going to the poor-house? You act as though I had won that much money at the county fair, or had squandered an equal amount at the same place. The truth is, Gottfried Nothafft entrusted me with three thousand taler. That’s what he did; that’s the truth. It was his intention to keep the whole affair from the chatter of women. And he willed that I should use this hard-earned capital in a productive way, and not give it to the culprit who would waste it in debauchery and worse if possible.”
“Ill-gotten goods seldom prosper,” said Theresa, without looking up. “Things may go along all right for ten years, and that seems like a long time, but the vengeance of Heaven comes in the eleventh, as it has already come in the case of little Marcus.”
“Theresa—you’re talking like a mad woman,” said Jason Philip at the top of his voice. With that he picked up a chair, and threw it on the floor so violently that every cup, spoon, and plate in the room shook.
Theresa turned her peasant face toward him without the shadow of a trace of fear. He was a trifle alarmed: “You’ll have to be responsible, if you can, for any misfortune that visits us in the future.” She spoke these words with a deep voice.
“Do you think I am a bandit?” said Jason Philip. “Do you think I want to pocket the money? Don’t you think that I am capable of anything better or higher than that? Or is ambition of any sort quite beyond your powers of comprehension?”
“Well, what ambitions do you have?” asked Theresa in a tone of sullenness, her eyes in the meantime blinking.
“Listen,” Jason Philip continued, as he sat down on the chair he had so violently abused a minute before, and assumed the airof a teacher: “The culprit has got to submit, and that with good grace. He has got to fall on his knees before me. And he’ll come to it. I have made some inquiries; I am on his tracks; and I know that he has just about reached the end of his rope. He’ll come, depend upon it he’ll come around, and when he does he will whine. Then I am going to take him into the business. In this way we will see whether it is humanly possible to make a useful man out of him. If I can, and if he sticks, I’ll call him into the office, tell him the whole story, make everything as clear as day to him, and then offer to take him in as a partner in the firm. You have got to admit that he will be a made man if he becomes my partner. He will have sense enough himself to see this, and as sure as you are living, he will first kiss my hand and then eat out of it for the kindness I have shown him. And once this has all been put through, I will bind him to us more firmly than ever by having him marry Philippina.”
A wry smile disfigured Theresa’s face. “I see, so, so,” she said in a sing-song tone. “You will have him marry Philippina. I take it that you feel that she will be hard to marry, and that the man who does marry her will have his hands full. Well, that’s not a bad idea.”
“In this way,” continued Jason Philip, without detecting the scorn in Theresa’s words, “the account between the culprit and myself will be settled. He will become a decent member of society, the money will remain in the family, and Philippina will be cared for.”
“And suppose he does not come; suppose he does not fall on his knees; suppose you have made a miscalculation. What then?” Whether Jason Philip himself believed what he had said Theresa could not determine. Nor had she the slightest desire to enlighten herself on this point. She did not look him in the face, but contented herself with letting her eyes rest on his hands.
“Well—there will be time then to change my plans,” said Jason Philip, in a tone of peeved vexation. “Leave it to me. I have turned the whole situation over in my mind; I have omitted not the slightest detail. I know men, and I have never made a mistake in judging them.Mahlzeit!”
With that he went out.
Theresa remained seated for a while, her arms folded across her breast. Then she got up, and walked over to the door that opened on to the court. Suddenly she stopped as if rooted to the sill: she caught sight of Philippina, who was then sitting by thewindow mending a pair of socks. On her face there was an expression of naïveté that may be harmless in itself, but it was enough to arouse suspicion.
“What’s the matter with you, why didn’t you go to school?” asked Theresa uneasily.
“I couldn’t; I had a headache,” said Philippina curtly, and broke the thread as she gave a hasty jerk at the needle. Her dishevelled hair hung down over her forehead and quite concealed her face.
Theresa was silent. Her gloom-laden eyes rested on the diligent fingers of Philippina. It was easy to suspect that the girl had heard everything Jason Philip had said, for he had such a loud voice. She could have done this without going to the trouble of listening at the door. Theresa was minded to give the girl a talking-to; but she controlled herself, and quietly withdrew.
Philippina looked straight through her as she left. But she did not interrupt her work, and in a short while she could be heard humming a tune to herself. There was a challenge in her voice.
Daniel’s money was about at an end. The new sources on which he had hoped to be able to draw were nowhere to be discovered. He defiantly closed the doors against care; and when fear showed its gloomy face, he shut up shop, and went out to drown his sorrows with the brethren of the Vale of Tears.
Schwalbe, the sculptor, had made the acquaintance of Zingarella, then engaged in singing lascivious couplets at the Academy, and invited the fellows to join him.
The Academy was a theatre of the lowest description. Smoking was, of course, permitted. When they arrived the performance was over. People were still sitting at many of the tables. Reeking as the auditorium was with the stench of stale beer, it left the impression of a dark, dank cavern.
With an indifference that seemed to argue that Zingarella made no distinction between chairs and people, she took her seat between the sculptor and the writer. She laughed, and yet it was not laughter; she spoke, and her words were empty; she stretched out her hands, and the gesture was lifeless. She fixed her eyes on no one; she merely gazed about. She had a habit of shaking her bracelet in a way that aroused sympathy. And after making a lewd remark she would turn her head to one side, and therebystagger even the most hardened frequenter of this sort of places. Her complexion had been ruined by rouge, but underneath the skin there was something that glimmered like water under thin ice.
The former winsomeness of her lips was still traceable in the sorrowed curves of her now ravaged mouth.
At times her restless eyes, seeking whom they might entangle, were fixed on Daniel, then sitting quite alone at the lower end of the table. In order to avoid the unpleasant sensation associated with the thought of going up to such a distinguished-looking person and making herself known to him, she would have been grateful had some one picked her up and thrown her bodily at his feet. There was an element of strangeness about him. Zingarella saw that he had had nothing to do with women of her kind. This tortured her; she gnashed her teeth.
Daniel did not sense her hatred. As he looked into her face, marked with a life of transgression and already claimed by fate, he built up in his own soul a picture of inimitable chastity. He tried to see the playmate of a god. The curtain decorated with the distorted face of a harlequin, the acrobat and the dog trainer at the adjacent table, who were quarrelling over their money, the four half-grown gamblers directly behind him, the big fat woman who was lying stretched out on a bench with a red handkerchief over her face and trying to sleep, the writer who slandered other writers, the inventor who discoursed so volubly and incessantly on perpetual motion—to all of this he paid not the slightest bit of attention. For him it could just as well have been in the bottom of the sea. He got up and left.
But as he saw the snow-covered streets before him and was unable to decide whether he should go home or not, Zingarella stepped up to him. “Come, be quick, before they see that we are together,” she whispered. And thus they walked along like two fugitives, whose information concerning each other stops short with the certainty that both are poor and wretched and are making their way through a snow storm.
“What is your name?” asked Daniel.
“My name is Anna Siebert.”
The clock in the St. Lorenz Church struck three. The one up in the tower of St. Sebaldus corroborated this reckoning by also striking three and in much deeper tones.
They came to an old house, and after floundering through a long, dark, ill-smelling passage way, entered a room in the basement. Anna Siebert lighted a lamp that had a red chimney.Gaudy garments of the soubrette hung on the wall. A big, grey cat lay on the table cover and purred. Anna Siebert took the cat in her arms and caressed it. Its name was Zephyr. It accompanied her wherever she went.
Daniel threw himself on a chair and looked at the lamp. Zingarella, standing before the mirror, stroked the cat. Gazing distractedly into space, she remarked that the manager had discharged her because the public was no longer satisfied with her work.
“Is this what you call the public?” asked Daniel, who never once took his eyes from the lamp, just as Anna Siebert kept hers rigidly fixed on the desolate distances of the mirror. “These fathers of families who side-step every now and then, these counter-jumpers, the mere looks of whom is enough to snatch your clothing from your body, this human filth at the sight of which God must conceal His face in shame—this is what you call the public?”
“Well, however that may be,” Anna Siebert continued in a colourless voice, “the manager rushed into my dressing room, threw the contract at my feet, and said I had swindled him. How on earth could I have swindled him? I am no prima donna and my agent had told him so. You can’t expect a Patti on twenty marks a week. In Elberfeld I got twenty-five, and a year ago in Zürich I even drew sixty. Now he comes to me and says he doesn’t need to pay me anything. What am I to live off of? And you’ve got to live, haven’t you, Zephyr,” said Anna as she picked up the cat, pressed its warm fur to her cheek, and repeated, “You’ve got to live.”
She let her arms fall to her sides, the cat sprang on the floor, hunched up its back, wagged its tail, and purred. She then went up to Daniel, fell on her knees, and laid her head on his side. “I have reached the end,” she murmured in a scarcely audible voice, “I am at the end of all things.”
The snow beat against the window panes. With an expression on his face as though his own thoughts were murdering each other, Daniel looked into the corner from which Zephyr’s yellowish eyes were shining. The muscles of his face twitched like a fish on being taken from the hook.
And as he cowered in this fashion, the poor girl pressed against his body, his shoulders lowered, past visions again arose from the depths of the sea. First he heard a ravishing arpeggio in A-flat major and above it, a majestic theme, commanding quiet, as it were, in sixteenth triads. The two blended, inforte, with a powerful chord of sevens. There was a struggling, a separating, a wanderingon, and out of the subdued pianissimo there arose and floated in space a gentle voice in E-flat minor. O voice from the sea, O humanity on earth! The eighth note, unpitiable as ever in its elemental power, cut into the bass with the strength that moves and burrows as it advances, until it was caught up by the redeemed voice in E-flat major. And now everything suddenly became real. What had formerly been clouds and dreams, longing and wishing, at last took shape and form and stood before him. Indeed he himself became true, real, and conscious of his existence in a world of actualities.
On his way home he covered his face with his hands, for the windows of the houses gaped at him like the hollow eyes of a demi-monde.
Zingarella could not imagine why the strange man had left. He seemed to be quite indifferent. Her heart beat with numerical accuracy, but there was no strength in the beats. The sole creature through which she was bound to the world was Zephyr.
Night followed night, day followed day. Each was like the preceding. She spoke when people took enough trouble to speak to her. She laughed when they had the incomprehensible desire to hear laughter. To-day she wrapped this dress around her shivering body, to-morrow another. She waited for the time to come when she was to do something definite. She lay in bed and dreaded the darkness; she pondered on the injustice of the world; she thought of her own disgrace, and reflected on the need that surrounded her. It was too much for her to bear.
A man would come, and at daylight he would leave and mingle with the rest of the people on the street. When she awoke she could no longer recall what he looked like. The landlady would bring in soup and meat. Then some one knocked at the door; but she did not open it. She had no desire to find out who it was. Perhaps it was the man who had been with her the night before; perhaps it was another.
She had neither curiosity nor hope. Her soul had dissolved like a piece of salt in water. When she returned home on the third day she found Zephyr lying by the coal-scuttle dead. She knelt down, touched the cold fur, wrinkled her brow, shook her bracelet, and went out.
It was getting along toward night, and the air was heavy withmist. She went first through lighted streets, and then turned into others that were not lighted. She passed through avenues of leafless trees, and walked across silent squares. The snow made walking difficult. When it was too deep, she was obliged to stop every now and then and take a deep breath.
She reached the river at a point where the shore was quite flat and the water shallow. Without thinking for a moment, without a moment’s hesitation, just as if she were blind, or as if she saw a bridge where there was none, she walked in.
First she felt the water trickling into her shoes. Then she could feel her legs getting wet, as her clothes, soft, slippery, and ice-cold, clung to her body. Now her breast was under the water, and now her neck. She sank down, glided away, took one deep breath, smiled, and as she smiled she lost consciousness.
The next day her body was washed up on the shore some distance beyond the city. It was taken to the morgue of the Rochus Cemetery.
Schwalbe, the sculptor, was attending a funeral. His nephew had died, and was being buried in the same cemetery.
As he passed by the morgue he caught sight of the body of a girl. After the child had been buried he went back to the morgue. A few people were standing near the body, one of whom said, “She was a singer down at the Academy.”
Schwalbe was struck by the pure and beautiful expression on the girl’s face. He studied it long and with no little emotion. Then he went to the superintendent, and asked if he might take a death mask. The permission was given him, and in a few hours he returned with the necessary implements.
When he removed the mask from the face, he held something truly wonderful in his hands. It showed the features of a sixteen-year-old girl, a face full at once of sweetness and melancholy, and, most charming of all, an angelic smile on the curved lips of this mouth of sorrow. It resembled the work of a renowned artist, so much so that the sculptor was suddenly seized with a burning desire to regain his lost art.
He was nevertheless obliged within a week to sell the mask to the caster by whom he was employed in Pfannenschmied Street. Schwalbe needed ready money. The caster hung the mask by the door at the entrance to his shop.
At the end of December Daniel found himself with not a cent of cash, so that he was obliged to sell his sole remaining treasure, the score of the Bach mass in B-minor. Spindler had presented it to him when he left, and now he had to take it to the second-hand dealer and part with it for a mere pittance.
Unless he cared to lie in bed the whole day, he was obliged to walk the streets in order to keep warm. His poverty made it out of the question for him to go to any of the cafés, and so he was excluded from association with the brethren of the Vale of Tears. He had moreover taken a violent dislike to them.
One evening he was standing out in front of the Church of Ægydius, listening to the organ that some one was playing. The icy wind blew through his thin clothing. When the concert was over he went down to the square, and leaned up against the wall of one of the houses. He was tremendously lonesome; he was lonely beyond words.
Just then two men came along who wished to enter the very house against the wall of which he leaned. He was cold. One of these men was Benjamin Dorn, the other was Jordan. Benjamin Dorn spoke to him; Jordan stood by in silence, apparently quite appreciative of the condition in which the young man found himself, as he stood there in the cold and made unfriendly replies to the questions that were put to him. Jordan invited Daniel up to his room. Daniel, chilled to the very marrow of his bones, and able to visualise nothing but a warm stove, accepted the invitation.
Thus Daniel came in contact with Jordan’s family. He had three children: Gertrude, aged nineteen, Eleanore, aged sixteen, and Benno, fifteen years old and still a student at thegymnasium. His wife was dead.
Gertrude was said to be a pietist. She went to church every day, and had an inclination toward the Catholic religion, a fact which gave Jordan, as an inveterate Protestant, no little worry. During the day she looked after the house; but as soon as she had everything in order, she would take her place by the quilting frame and work on crowns of thorns, hearts run through with swords, and languishing angels for a mission. There she would sit, hour after hour, with bowed head and knit.
The first time Daniel saw her she had on a Nile green dress, fastened about her hips with a girdle of scales, while her wavy brown hair hung loose over her shoulders. It was in this make-upthat he always saw her when he thought of her years after: Nile green dress, bowed head, sitting at the quilting frame, and quite unaware of his presence, a picture of unamiability, conscious or affected.
Eleanore was entirely different. She was like a lamp carried through a dark room.
For some time she had been employed in the offices of the Prudentia, for she wished to make her own living. So far as it was humanly possible to determine from her casual remarks, she thoroughly enjoyed her work. She liked to make out receipts for premiums, lick stamps, copy letters, and see so many people come in and go out. Stout old Diruf and lanky Zittel did everything they could to keep her interested, and if, despite their efforts, it was seen that a morose mood was invading her otherwise cheerful disposition, they took her out to the merry-go-round, and in a short time her wonted buoyancy had returned.
She seemed like a child, and yet she was every inch a woman. She insisted on wearing her little felt cap at a jaunty angle on her blond hair. When she entered the room, the atmosphere in it underwent a change; it was easier to breathe; it was fresher. People somehow disapproved of the fact that her eyes were so radiantly blue, and that her two rows of perfect white teeth were constantly shining from out between her soft, peach-like lips. They said she was light-hearted; they said she was a butterfly. Benjamin Dorn was of the opinion that she was a creature possessed of the devil of sensuality and finding her completest satisfaction in earthly finery and frippery. For some time there had been an affair of an intimate nature between her and Baron von Auffenberg. Just what it was no one knew precisely; the facts were not obtainable. But Benjamin Dorn, experienced ferreter that he was, could not see two people of different sexes together without imagining that he was an accomplice in the hereditary sin of human kind. And one day he caught Eleanore alone in the company of Baron von Auffenberg. From that day on she was, in his estimation, a lost soul.
The fact concerning Eleanore was this: life never came very close to her. It comes right up to other people, strangles them, or drags them along with it. It kept its distance from Eleanore, for she lived in a glass case. If she had sorrow of any kind, if some painfully indeterminable sensation was gnawing at her soul, if the vulgarity and banality of a base and disjointed world came her way, the glass case in which she lived simply became morespacious than ever, and the things or thoughts that swarmed around it more and more incomprehensible.
One can always laugh if one lives in a glass case. Even bad dreams remain on the outside. Even longing becomes nothing more than a purple breath which clouds the crystal from without, not from within.
The people were quite right in saying that Jordan was bringing up his daughters like princesses. Both were far removed from the customary things of life: the one was translated to the realm of darkness, the other to that of light.
Daniel saw both of them. They were just as strange to him as he to them. He saw the brother, too, a tall, glib, dapper youth. He saw the old house with its dilapidated stairs, its rooms filled with cumbersome, provincial furniture. He saw the alternating currents of life in this family: there was now rest, now unrest, now quiet, now storm. Life flowed out from the house, and then life, the same or of a different origin, flowed back in again. When he came, he talked with Jordan himself rather than with any one else; for he always knew when Jordan would be at home. They spoke in a free and easy fashion and about things in general. If their conversation could be characterised more fully, it might be said that Daniel was reserved and Jordan tactful. Gertrude sat by the table and attended to her needlework.
Daniel came and warmed himself by the stove. If he was offered a sandwich or a cup of coffee he declined. If the offer was made with noticeable insistency, he shook his head and distorted the features of his face until he resembled an irritated ape. It was the peasant spirit of defiance in him that made him act this way. He nourished a measure of small-minded anxiety lest he be indebted to somebody for something. To temptations, yielding to which would have been spiritually mortifying, he was impervious. When, consequently, his need became overpowering, he simply stayed away.
His want grew into a purple sheen. To him there was an element of the ridiculous in the whole situation: it was 1882 and he had nothing to eat; he was twenty-three years old and quite without food.
Frau Hadebusch, virago that she could be when a dubious debtor failed to fulfil his obligations, stormed her way up the steps.The rent was long overdue, and uncanny councils were being held in the living room, in which an invalid from the Wasp’s Nest and a soap-maker from Kamerarius Street were taking part.
In his despair, Daniel thought of entering the army. He reported at the barracks, was examined—and rejected because of a hollow chest.
At first there was the purple sheen. He saw it as he stood on the hangman’s bridge and looked down into the water where pieces of ice were drifting about. But when he raised his distressed face a gigantic countenance became visible. The great vaulted arch of heaven was a countenance fearfully distorted by vengeance and scorn. Of escape from it there could be no thought. Within his soul everything became wrapped in darkness. Tones and pictures ran together, giving the disagreeably inarticulate impression that would be made by drawing a wet rag across a fresh, well-ordered creation.
As he walked on, it seemed to him that the horror of the vision was diminishing. The countenance became smaller and more amiable. It was now not much larger than the façade of a church and what wrath remained seemed to be concentrated in the forehead. An old woman passed by, carrying apples in her apron. He trembled at the smell of them; but he did not reach out; he did not try to take a single one of them from her; he still held himself in control. By this time the entire vision was not much larger than the top of a tree, and in it were the traces of mercy.
The sun was high in the heavens, the snow was melting, birds were chirping everywhere. As he sauntered along with uncertain steps through Pfannenschmied Street he suddenly stopped as if rooted to the pavement. There was the vision: he caught sight of it in bodily form on the door jamb of the shop. He could not see that it was the mask of Zingarella. Of course not, for it was a transfigured face, and how could he have grasped a reality in his present state of mind? He looked from within out. The thing before him was a vision; it joined high heaven with the earth below; it was a promise. He could have thrown himself down on the street and wept, for it seemed to him that he was saved.
The incomparable resignation and friendly grief in the expression of the mask, the sanctity under the long eyelashes, the half extinguished smile playing around the mouth of sorrow, the element of ghostliness, a being far removed from death and equally far removed from life—all this caused his feeling to swell intoone of credulous devotion. His entire future seemed to depend upon coming into possession of the mask. Without a moment’s hesitation or consideration he rushed into the shop.
Within he found a young man whom the caster addressed most respectfully as Dr. Benda, and who was about thirty years old. Dr. Benda was being shown a number of successful casts of a figure entitled “The Fountain of Virtue.” It was quite a little while before the caster turned to Daniel and asked him what he wanted. In a somewhat rude voice and with an unsteady gesture, Daniel made it clear to him that he wished to buy the mask. The caster removed it from the door, laid it on the counter, and named his price. He looked at the shabby clothing of the newly arrived customer, concluded at once that the price, ten marks, would be more than he could afford, and turned again to Dr. Benda, so that Daniel might have time to make up his mind.
The two conversed for quite a while. When the caster finally turned around, he was not a little surprised to see that Daniel was still standing at the counter. He stood there in fact with half closed eyes, his left hand lying on the face of the mask. The caster exchanged a somewhat dazed glance with Dr. Benda, who, in a moment of forewarning sympathy, grasped the situation perfectly in which the stranger found himself. Dr. Benda somehow understood, owing to his instinct for appreciation of unusual predicaments, the man’s poverty, his isolation, and even the ardour of his wish. Subduing as well as he might the feeling of ordinary reserve, he stepped up to Daniel, and said to him calmly, quietly, seriously, and without the slightest trace of condescension: “If you will permit me to advance you the money for the mask, you will do me a substantial favor.”
Daniel gritted his teeth—just a little. His face turned to a greenish hue. But the face of his would-be friend, schooled in affairs of the spirit, showed a winning trace of human kindness. It conquered Daniel; it made him gentle. He submitted. Dr. Benda laid the money for the mask on the counter, and Daniel was as silent as the tomb.
When they left the shop, Daniel held the mask under his arm so tightly that the paper wrapping was crushed, if the mask itself was not. The sad state of his clothing and his haggard appearance in general struck Dr. Benda at once and forcibly. He needed to ask but a few well chosen questions to get at the underlying cause of this misery, physical and spiritual, in human form.He pretended that he had not lunched and invited Daniel to be his guest at the inn at the sign of the Grape.
Daniel felt that his soul had suddenly been unlocked by a magic key. At last—he had ears and could hear, eyes and could see. It seemed to him that he had come up to earth from out of some lightless, subterranean cavern. And when they separated he had a friend.
Thespectacle of wellnigh complete degeneracy offered by the roister-doistering slough brethren of the Vale of Tears gave Herr Carovius a new lease on life. He had a really affable tendency to associate with men who were standing just on the brink of human existence. He always drank a great deal of liqueur. The brand he preferred above all others was what is known as Knickebein. Once he had enjoyed his liberal potion, he became jovial, friendly, companionable. In these moods he would venture the hardiest of assertions, not merely in the field of eroticism, but against the government and divine providence as well.
And yet, when he trippled home with mincing steps, there was in his face an expression of cowardly, petty smirking. It was the sign of his inner return to virtuous living; for his night was not as his day. The one belied the other.
He had a quite respectable income; the house in which he lived was his own private property. It was pointed out to strangers as one of the sights of the town; it was certainly one of the oldest and gloomiest buildings in that part of the country. An especially attractive feature of it was the smart and graceful bay-window. Above the beautifully arched outer door there was a patrician coat-of-arms, consisting of two crossed spears with a helmet above. This was chiselled into the stone. In the narrow court was a draw-well literally set in a frame of moss. Each floor of the house had its own gallery, richly supplied with the most artistic of carvings. The stairway was spacious; the tread of the steps was broad, the elevation slight; there were four landings. It symbolised in truth the leisurely, comfortable tarrying of centuries gone before and now a matter of easy memory only.
Often in the nighttime, Herr Carovius recognised in the distance the massive figure of his brother-in-law, Andreas Döderlein, the professor of music. Not wishing to meet him, Herr Carovius would stand at the street corner, until the light from Döderlein’s study assured him that the professor was at home. On other occasionshe would come in contact with the occupant of the second floor, Dr. Friedrich Benda. When these two came together, there was invariably a competitive tipping of hats and passing of compliments. Each wished to outdo the other in matters of courtesy. Neither was willing to take precedence over the other. The polished civility of the young man made an even greater degree of pretty behaviour on the part of Herr Carovius imperative, with the result that his excessive refinement of manners made him appear awkward, while his embarrassment made coherent speech difficult and at times impossible.
When however he came alone, he would take the huge key from his pocket, unlock the door, light a candle, hold it high above his head, and spy into every nook and cranny of the barn-like hall before entering his apartment on the ground floor.
Herr Carovius was a regular customer at the Crocodile Inn; a table was always reserved for him. Around it there assembled every noon the following companions: Solicitor of the Treasury Korn, assistant magistrate Hesselberger, assistant postmaster Kitzler, apothecary Pflaum, jeweller Gründlich, and baker Degen. Judge Kleinlein also joined them occasionally as a guest of honour.
They gossiped about their neighbours, their acquaintances, their friends, and their colleagues. What they said ran the whole gamut of human emotions from an innocent anecdote up to venomous calumny. Not a single event was immune from malicious backstairs comment. Reputations were sullied without discrimination; objections were taken to the conduct of every living soul; every family was shown to have its skeleton in the closet.
When the luncheon was finished, the men all withdrew and went about their business, with the exception of Herr Carovius. He remained to read the papers. For him it was one of the most important hours of the day. Having feasted his ears with friends in private, he now turned to a study of the follies, transgressions, and tragedies that make up everyday life.
He read three papers every day: one was a local sheet, one a great Berlin daily, and the third a paper published in Hamburg. He never deviated; it was these three, week in and week out. And he read them from beginning to end; politics, special articles, and advertisements were of equal concern to him. In this way he familiarised himself with the advance of civilisation, the changescivic life was undergoing, and the general status of the aristocracy, bourgeoisie, and proletariat.
Nothing escaped him. He was as much interested in the murder of a peasant in a Pommeranian village as he was in the loss of a pearl necklace on the Boulevard des Italiens in Paris. He read with equal concentration of the sinking of a steamer in the South Sea and the wedding of a member of the Royal Family in Westminster Abbey. He could work up just as much enthusiasm over the latest fashions as he could over the massacring of enslaved Armenians by the Turks. If he read with care and reflection of the death of a leading citizen, he pursued the same course with regard to the reprehending of a relatively harmless vagabond.
It is only fair to remark, however, that his real sympathy was with those events that have to be entered on the calamitous side of life’s ledger. This was due to a bizarre kink in his philosophy: he studied the world primarily from the point of view of its wars, earthquakes, floods, hailstorms, cyclones, and public and private tragedies in the lives of men. Happy and reassuring events, such as the birth of a healthy child, the conferring of an order of distinction, heroic deeds, the winning of a prize in the lottery, the publication of a good book, or the announcement of a legitimate and successful speculation made no impression on him. At times they even annoyed him. He kept his mind, in other words, riveted on the evils, sorrows, woes, and tribulations that come to pass either on this earth or in the starry firmament above, and that were somehow brought to his attention.
His brain was a storehouse of fearful and ferocious happenings; it was a catalogue, an inventory of disease, seduction, theft, robbery, larceny, assassination, murder, catastrophe, pest, incest, suicide, duel, bankruptcy, and the never failing family quarrel.
If he chanced to enrich his collection by the addition of some especially curious or unheard-of incident, he took out his pocket diary, noted the date, and then wrote: “In Amberg a preacher had a hemorrhage while delivering his morning sermon.” Or: “In Cochin China a tiger killed and ate fourteen children, and then, forcing its way into the bungalow of a settler, bit off the head of a woman as she was sleeping peacefully by the side of her husband.” Or: “In Copenhagen a former actress, now ninety years old, mounted a huge vegetable basket on the market place, and recited Lady Macbeth’s monologue. Her unconventional behaviour attracted such a large crowd of passersby that several people were crushed to death in the excitement.”
This done, he would go home, happy as a man can be. To idlers standing in the doorways or servants looking out the windows he would extend the greetings of the day, and that with really conspicuous cordiality.
If a fire broke out in the city, he was present. As his eyes peered into the flames, they seemed intoxicated, obsessed, seized with uncanniness. He would hum a tune of some sort, look into the anxious faces of those immediately concerned, busy himself with whatever had been salvaged, and attempt to force his gratuitous advice on the fire chief.
If a prominent citizen died, he never failed to attend the funeral, and, where possible, to join the procession on the way to the cemetery. He would stand by the grave with bowed head, and take in every word of the funeral discourse. But his lips twitched in a peculiar fashion, as if he felt that he were understood, and flattered.
And in truth all this did flatter him. The defeat, distress, and death of other people, the betrayals that take place in any community, the highhanded injustice of those in power, the oppression of the poor, the violence that was done to right and righteousness, and the sufferings which had to be borne by thousands day after day, all this flattered him; it interested him; it lulled him into a comfortable feeling of personal security.
But then he sat down at his piano at home, and played an adagio of Beethoven or an impromptu by Schubert, his eyes with fine frenzy rolling in the meantime. And when the mighty chorus in a Bach oratorio resounded, he became pale with ecstasy. At the hearing of a good song well sung he could shed copious tears.
He idolised music.
He was a provincial with unfettered instincts. He was an agitator with a tendency to conservatism. He was a Nero without servants, without power, and without land. He was a musician from despair and out of vanity. He was a Nero in our own day.
He was the Nero of our day living in three rooms. He was a lonely bachelor and a bookworm. He exchanged his views with the corner grocer; he discussed city ordinances with the night watchman; he was a tyrant through and through and a hangman at heart; he indulged in eavesdropping at the shrine of fate, and in this way concocted the most improbable of combinations and wanton deeds of violence; he was constantly on the lookout for misfortune, litigation, and shame; he rejoiced at every failure,and was delighted with oppression, whether at home or abroad. He hung with unqualified joy on the imagined ruins of imaginary disaster, and took equal pleasure in the actual debacles of life as it was lived about him. And alongside of this innate and at times unexpressed gruesomeness and bloodthirstiness, he was filled with a torturing passion for music. This was Herr Carovius. Such was his life.
For nine long years, that is, from the time she was fifteen until she was twenty-four, his sister Marguerite kept house for him. She got his breakfast, made his bed, darned his socks, and brushed his clothes; and all he knew about her was that she had yellowish hair, a skin full of freckles, and a timid, child-like voice. His astonishment was consequently unbounded when Andreas Döderlein called one day and proposed to her. He had moved into the house the year before. Herr Carovius was amazed for the very simple reason that he had never known Marguerite except as a fourteen-year-old girl.
He took her to task. With unusual effort she summoned the courage to tell him that she was going to marry Döderlein. “You are a shameless prostitute,” he said, though he did not dare to show Andreas Döderlein the door. The wedding took place.
One evening he was sitting in the company of the young couple. Andreas Döderlein, being in an unusually happy mood, went to the piano, and began playing the shepherd’s motif from Wagner’s “Tristan and Isolde.”
Herr Carovius sprang to his feet as if stung by a viper, and exclaimed: “Stop playing that foul magic! You know as well as you are living that I don’t believe in it.”
“What do you mean, brother?” asked Andreas Döderlein, his head bowed in grief.
“What are you trying to do? Are you trying to teach me something about this poisoner of wells?” shouted Herr Carovius, and his face took on the enraged expression of a hunchback who has just been taunted about his deformity. “Does the professor imagine that he knows better than I do who this Richard Wagner is, this comedian, this Jew who goes about masked as the Germanic Messiah, this cacaphonist, this bungler, botcher, and bully, this court sycophant, this Pulchinello who pokes fun at the whole German Empire and the rest of Europe led about by the nose,this Richard Wagner? Very well, if you have anything to teach me about him, go on! Proceed! I am listening. Go on! Pluck up your courage.” With this he leaned back in his chair, and laughed a laughter punctuated with asthmatic sighs, his hands in the meantime resting folded across his stomach.
Andreas Döderlein rose to his full stature, see-sawed a bit on the tips of his toes, and looked down on Herr Carovius as one might look down upon a flea that one had caught and was just in the act of crushing between two finger nails. “Oh, ho,” he said, “how interesting! Upon my word, brother Carovius, you are an interesting individual. But if some one were to offer me all the money in the world, I should not like to be so ... interesting. Not I. And you, Marguerite, would you like to be so interesting?”
There was something distinctly annihilating in this air of superiority. It had its full effect on Herr Carovius: his unleashed laughter was immediately converted into a gurgling titter. He opened his eyes wide and rolled them behind his nose-glasses, thus making himself look like a water-spitting figure on a civic fountain. Marguerite, however, timid as she was, never saying a word without making herself smaller by hiding her hands, glanced in helpless fashion from her brother to her husband, and dropped her head before them.
Was the feeling of Herr Carovius for Andreas Döderlein one of hatred? It was hatred and more. It was a feeling of venomous embitterment with which he thought of him, his name, his wife, his child, the thick, bulky wedding ring on his finger, and the gelatinous mass of flesh on his neck. From that evening on he never again visited his sister. If Marguerite got up enough courage to visit him, he treated her with crabbed contempt. She finally came to the point where she would pass his door with not a thought of entering it.
When the first child was born and the maid brought him the glad tidings, he squinted into the corner, tittered, and made bold to say: “Well, my congratulations. It is good that the Döderleins are not to become extinct, for so long as one of them is living,plaisirwill not have vanished from the earth.”
Little Dorothea formed in time the habit of playing on the steps or around the old windlass well in the backyard. Herr Carovius procured forthwith a mean dog and named him Cæsar. Cæsar was tied to a chain, to be sure, but his snarls, his growls, his vicious teeth were hardly calculated to inspire the child with alove for the place near him. She soon stopped playing at home.
Four years had elapsed since the Carovius-Döderlein wedding. Herr Carovius was celebrating his birthday. Marguerite called with Dorothea. The child recited a poem which she had learned by heart for her uncle’s benefit. Carovius shook with laughter when he saw the girl dressed up like a doll and realised that the recital was imminent. Dorothea had of course the enunciation of one of her age. When through, Herr Carovius said: “Honestly, it would never have occurred to me that such a little toad could croak so beautifully.”
Though the man knew so little about women that it would be perilous to attempt to measure his ignorance of them, he nevertheless felt, as he looked into Marguerite’s radiant face, a certain disappointment in life—a disappointment which he would try at once to benumb but which delighted him.
About this time Herr Becker died. He was the senior city official, and had been living in the second story of the apartment for twenty-eight years. Dr. Benda moved in at once with his mother.
Carovius told all about this at the reserved table in the Crocodile. His companions were in a position to tell him a great deal more about the ancestry and past life of the Bendas. They were said to have been very rich once, to have lost their money in the great panic, and to be living at present in quite moderate circumstances. Benda’s father was said to have shot himself, and his mother was reported to have taken the boy to school every morning. Solicitor Korn had been told that, despite his youth, Dr. Benda had written a number of scientific books on biology, but that this had not enabled him to reach his desired goal.
“What goal?” the table companions asked in unison.
“Why, he wanted to be made a professor, but people had objected.” Why had they objected? came the question from more than one throat. “Well, you see it was this way: the man is a Jew, and the authorities are not going to appoint a Jew to an official position in a university without raising objections. That is to be taken as a matter of course.” That this was in very truth to be taken as a matter of course was also the opinion of Herr Carovius, who, however, insisted that Benda didn’t exactly look like a Jew; he looked more like a tolerably fat Dutchman. Hewas in truth not quite blond, but he was not dark either, and his nose was as straight as a rule.
“That is just the point: that’s the Jewish trick,” remarked the Judge, and took a mighty draught from his beer glass. “In olden times,” he said, “the Jews all had the yellow spots, aquiline noses, and hair like bushmen. But to-day no Christian can be certain who is Jew and who is Gentile.” To this the whole table agreed.
Herr Carovius at once began a system of espionage. He studied the faces of the new tenants, and was particularly careful to note when they went out and when they came in and with whom they associated. He knew precisely when they turned the lights out at night and when they opened the windows in the morning. He could tell exactly how many rugs they had, how much coal they burned, how much meat they ate, how many letters they received, what walks they preferred, what people they spoke to, and who recognised them. As if this were not enough, he went down to the bookstore, bought the complete works of Dr. Benda, and read these heavy scientific treatises in the sweat of his brow. He was annoyed at the thought that they had not been critically reviewed. He would have embraced any one who would have told him that they were all perfectly worthless compilations.
One evening, along towards spring, he chanced to go into the backyard to feed Cæsar. He looked up, and saw Marguerite standing on the balcony. She did not see him, for she was also looking up. On the balcony of the second floor, across the court from her, stood Friedrich Benda, responding to some mute signals Marguerite was giving him. Finally they both stopped and merely looked at each other, until Marguerite caught sight of her brother, when she quickly disappeared behind the glass door draped with green curtains.
“Aha,” thought Carovius, “there’s something up.” The scene warmed his very blood.
From that day on he avoided the court. He sat instead for hours at a time in a room from which he could look out through a crack and see everything that was taking place at the windows and on the balconies. He discovered that signals were being sent from the first floor up to the second by changing the position of a flower pot on the railing of the balcony, and that these signals were answered by having a yellow cloth flutter on now a vertical, now a horizontal pole.
At times Marguerite would come out quite timidly, and look up; at times Benda appeared, and stood for a while at the windowcompletely absorbed, as it seemed, in melancholy thoughts. Herr Carovius caught them together but on one single occasion. He opened the window as quickly as he could, and placed his ear so that he could hear what was being said, but it so happened that over in the adjoining yard some one was just then nailing a box together. As a result of the noise it was impossible for him to understand their remarks.
Since that day they exchanged no more signals, and never again appeared on the balcony.
Carovius rubbed his hands at the thought that the majestic Andreas Döderlein had after all grown horns. But his joy waned when he reflected that two other people were deriving profit from the situation. That should not be; that had to be corrected.
And so he stood at times in the evening out in the narrow passage at the entrance to his apartment. His bathrobe fell down over his bony body in many folds. In his right hand he carried a candle. Thus equipped, he listened in, or rather into, the stillness of the house.
At times he would take a dark lantern, walk up the stairs slowly, step by step, and listen, listen with the greedy ears of a man who was determined to hear something. There was something in the air that told him of secret, and of course illicit, transactions.
Was it the same medium through which he learned of the weakening of Marguerite’s mind and the beclouding of her soul? Was it this that told him of her mental anxiety and the ever growing delusion of her terrified and broken heart?
Later he learned of her mad outbursts of anxiety concerning the life of her child. He heard that she would never allow the child out of her sight; that she regarded the natural warmth of her body as a high fever; that every morning she would stand by Dorothea’s bed, weep, take her in her arms, feel her pulse, and wrap her body in warm clothing. He heard, too, that night after night she sat by the child’s bedside watching over her and praying for her, while the child herself slept like an old shoe. All this he learned from the maid.
One day Herr Carovius came home, and found an ambulance and a crowd of gaping people before the house. As he went up the stairway he heard a hushed whimpering. Marguerite was being dragged from the house by two men. The rear of this procession was brought up by Andreas Döderlein, on whose face there was an expression of accusation. The room door was open.He looked in, and saw bits of broken glasses and dishes, and in the midst of the debris sat Dorothea. Her mouth was puckered as if just on the point of weeping, and a cloth was bound about her forehead. The maid stood in the door wringing her hands. And on a step above was Friedrich Benda, white as a sheet, and evidently suffering from great mental anxiety.
Marguerite offered but little resistance. She looked behind her, and tried to see what the child was doing. Herr Carovius buried his hands in his overcoat pockets, and followed the mournful caravan out on to the street. The poor woman was taken to the insane asylum at Erlangen.
Herr Carovius said to himself: somebody is responsible for all this. He determined at once to bring the guilty party to account. He took this stand neither out of grief nor from a feeling of love for his fellow men. His action was motivated by his hatred of a world in which something is constantly going on, and in the midst of which he was condemned to an inactive and deedless life.
Not much could be learned from Döderlein’s maid. The efforts to draw something out of little Dorothea were also fruitless. She was wrapped up in her own affairs. She arranged her ribbons, played with her toys, recounted the small incidents of her uneventful life, and could hardly be persuaded even to listen to the ingenious questions Carovius put to her when he stopped her out in the hall and asked her about this and that.
One day he went over to Erlangen to visit his sister in the insane asylum. He thought that he might be able to get some clue to this mystery from her.
He found her sitting in the corner of a room, stroking her long, yellowish hair. Her head was bowed; her eyes were fixed on the floor. Through no cunning that he could devise was it possible to entice a single statement from her.
The physician said: “She is a harmless patient, but most secretive and passionate. She must have suffered for years from some heavy burden on her soul.”
Herr Carovius left her, and went back to the station. The sun was shining bright. He soon saw to his infinite discomfort that it was impossible to eliminate the picture of the melancholy woman from his inner eye. He went into a café and drank somewhiskey. On the return journey an old woman sat opposite him who seemed to understand him. There was a trace of compassion in her eyes. This made him so uneasy that he found it necessary to change his seat.
He had met with unanticipated difficulties in his investigation. He recognised these fully, but consoled himself with the thought that there was still time. It occurred to him that he might somehow get hold of Dr. Benda and cross-question him. He recalled having seen Friedrich Benda meet little Dorothea on the stairway once, and no sooner had he seen her coming than he made every effort to avoid her. That set Carovius to thinking.
Some gas pipes had to be installed in the apartment about that time, and this gave him, as superintendent, a splendid opportunity to go up and see Benda. The doctor was just then making his final attempt to claim his rights—the rights of a man and a scholar—against the conspiracy of enemies who were really immune before the law.
He was all alone when Carovius called. He took him straight to his study. The walls of his hall as well as those of his room were covered with books from floor to ceiling. Benda said he was just getting ready to go on an extended journey. The finished politeness with which he removed the books from a chair and the tense way in which he eyed Herr Carovius made it clear to the latter that this was neither the time nor the place to engage in mock conversation. Carovius talked gas pipes. Benda finished all he had to say on this subject in two short, crisp sentences and got up to go.
Herr Carovius got up too, removed his nose glasses, and rubbed them with his bright blue handkerchief. “Where are you going, if I may ask?” There was an expression of apparent sympathy in his question.
Benda made it a habit never to treat any man impolitely, however little regard he might have for him personally. He said that he was going to Kiel to deliver his trial lecture at the university.
“Bravo!” cried Carovius, falling at once into the tone of awkward familiarity. “You have simply got to show those fellows that you are not a coward. Bravo!”
“I don’t quite understand you,” said Benda in amazement. His antipathy for the man was growing. And no one recognised this better than Carovius himself.
He cast a sideglance that reeked with hypocrisy at the young scholar. “My dear doctor, you must not look upon me as a pooruncultured yokel,” he said, “anch’ io sono pittore. I have read, among other things, your monograph on the morphogenetic achievements of the original sulcate cell. Listen, man! I take off my hat to that book. Of course, it is not exactly original, but then it is one of your earlier works. The idea developed in it follows pretty closely that of the evolutionary and mechanical theories of the much slandered Wilhelm Roux. And yet I am bound to say you display considerable independence in your method. Indeed you do. And more than that, you throw much needed light on the mysteries of God himself. There is a good deal of incoherent drivel these days about the freedom of science. Well, you’ll have to show me where it is. Scientists? They are a lot of conceited pin-heads, each working for himself, and incurably jealous of what his colleagues are doing. Up and at ’em, Doctor, that’s my advice, and luck to you!”
Benda was amazed to hear Carovius mention a work that was otherwise known only to specialists. This however merely tended to increase his distrust. He knew too much about the man to stand before him without a feeling of hostility. He merely needed to call to mind the story of the woman whose youth he had made into a waste place and a prison to be made aware of the fact that it was quite impossible to stand in his presence and breathe easily. The air of the room in which Carovius chanced to be was heavy, stuffy, depressing.
Benda’s bearing, however, remained unchanged. He replied in a serious tone: “It is not after all easy to get along with people. Each has his own place and wants to keep it. I thank you very much for your visit and your kind words, but my time is limited. I have a great deal to do—”
“Oh, certainly,” said Carovius hastily, while a rancorous grin flitted across his face, “but you don’t need to drive me away. I am going on my own accord. I have an engagement at the district court at five o’clock, I am to sign some sort of a document concerning the detention of my sister in the insane asylum. It probably has to do with the settling of her estate or something like that. Who knows? By the way, what have you to say about the affair? You knew her rather intimately. No hedging, doctor. There she sits in the cell and combs her hair. Can you imagine who is responsible? You know a woman doesn’t lose her mind from a mere love affair. And this music swindler down stairs—it is impossible to get him to show his true colours. Yes, we all have our troubles.”
In order to take the sting out of his impudent insinuations, for he regretted having made a premature move with his trump card, Carovius smiled in a scurrilous fashion, ducked his head, coward that he was, and riveted his greedy, banal eyes on Benda.
But Benda was looking down. His eyes had been attracted by the fancy buckle shoes of Herr Carovius. He was repelled by the man’s foppish socks with the yellow stripes which were made more conspicuous by the fact that his trousers were too high. He had a feeling of unmitigated mental nausea, too, when he noticed how Carovius lifted first one foot and then the other from the floor, and then set it down, heel first. It was a detestable habit; and indulging in it made an ugly noise.