INQUISITIONI
Edgar Lorm was accustomed to taking his meals without Judith, so he was not surprised at her absence to-day and sat down alone.
The meal was served: a lobster, breast of veal with salad and three kinds of vegetables, a pheasant with compote, a large boule de Berlin, pineapple and cheese. He drank two glasses of red Bordeaux and a pint of champagne.
He ate this excessively rich meal daily with the appetite of a giant and the philosophical delight of a gourmet. As he was lighting his heavy Havana cigar over his coffee, he heard Judith’s voice. She burst in, perturbed to the utmost.
“What has happened, dear child?” he asked.
“Something frightful,” she gasped, and sank into a chair.
Lorm arose. “But what has happened, my dear?”
She panted. “I haven’t been feeling at all well for several days. I got the doctor to look me over, and he says I’m pregnant.”
A sudden light came into Lorm’s eyes. “I don’t think that’s such a terrible misfortune.” He had difficulty in concealing his surprised delight. “On the contrary, I think it’s a blessed thing. I hardly dared hope for it. Indeed, my dear wife, I don’t know what I wouldn’t give to have it true.”
Judith’s eyes glittered as she replied: “It shall never be—never, never! I shall not remind you of our agreement; I shall not lay the blame on you if this terrible thing has really happened. I can’t believe it yet. It would make me feel bewitched. But you are mistaken if you count on any yieldingon my part, any womanly weakness, or any awakening of certain so-called instincts. Never, never! My body shall remain as it is—mine, all mine. I won’t have it lacerated and I won’t share it. It’s the only thing I still call my own. I won’t have a strange creature take possession of it, and I refuse to age by nine years in nine months. And I don’t want some mocking image of you or me to appear. Never, never! The horror of it! Be careful! If you take delight in something I detest so, the horror will extend itself to you!”
Lorm stretched himself a little, and regarded her with amazement. There was nothing for him to say.
She went into her bedroom and locked the door. Lorm gave orders that no visitors were to be admitted. Then he went into the library, and spent the time until eight reading a treatise on the motions of the fixed stars. But often he raised his eyes from the book, for he was preoccupied not so much with the secrets of the heavens as with very mundane and very depressing things. He got up and went to the door of Judith’s room. He listened and knocked, but Judith did not answer. At the end of half an hour he returned and knocked again. She knew his humble way of seeking admission, but she did not answer. The door remained locked.
At the end of each half hour, which he spent in reading about the stars, he returned to the door and knocked. He called her name. He begged her to have some confidence in him and hear what he had to say. He spoke in muffled tones, so as not to arouse the attention of the servants. He asked her not to blame him for his premature delight. He saw his error and deplored it. Only let her listen to him. He promised her gifts—an antique candlestick, a set of Dresden china, a frock made by Worth. In vain. She did not answer.
Three days passed. An oppressive atmosphere rested on the household. Lorm slunk through the rooms like an intimidated guest. He humiliated himself so far as to send Judith a letter by the housekeeper, who took in her meals and who alone hadaccess to her. At night he returned to the door again and again, placed his lips against it, and implored her. There was no stirring of anger in him, no impulse to clench his fist and break down the door. Judith knew that. She was beating her fish.
She knew that she could go any length.
This man had been the idol of a whole nation. He had been spoiled by fame, by the friendship of distinguished people, by the kindness of fate and all the amenities of life. His very whims had been feared; a frown of his had swept all opposition aside. Now he not only endured the maltreatment of this woman whom he had married after long solitariness and hesitation; he accepted insult and humiliation like the just rewards of some guilt. Weary of fame, appreciation, friendship, success, and domination, he seemed to lust after mortification, the reversal of all things, and the very voluptuousness of pain.
Quite late on the third evening he was summoned to the telephone by Wolfgang Wahnschaffe. The breach between Wolfgang and Judith that had followed his first visit forbade his visiting the house.
He begged Lorm for an interview on neutral ground. The occasion, he said, was most pressing. Lorm asked for details. The bitter and excited answer was that the question concerned Christian. Some common proceeding against him, some decision and plan, some protective measures were absolutely necessary. The family must be saved from both danger and inconceivable disgrace.
At this point Lorm interrupted him. “I feel rather sure that my wife will prove quite unapproachable in the matter. And what could I do more than the merest stranger?” Urged anew, he finally promised to meet Wolfgang at luncheon in a restaurant on Potsdamer Street.
He had scarcely hung up the receiver when Judith entered. She had on a négligée of dark-green velvet trimmed with fur.The garment had a long train. Her hair was carefully dressed, a cheerful smile was on her lips, and she stretched out both hands to Lorm.
He was happy, and took her hands and kissed them.
She put her arms about his neck and her lips close to his ear: “Everything is all right. The doctor is a donkey. I did you wrong. Everything is nice now, so be nice!”
“If only you are satisfied,” said Lorm, “nothing else matters.”
She nestled closer to him, and coaxed with eyes and mouth and hands: “How about the antique candlestick, darling, and the frock by Worth? Are you going to get them for me? And am I not to have my set of Dresden china?”
Lorm laughed. “Since you admit that you wronged me, the price of reconciliation is a trifle high,” he mocked. “But don’t worry. You shall have everything.”
He breathed a kiss upon her forehead. That disembodied tenderness was the symbol of the ultimate paralysis of his energy before her and men and the world. And from day to day this paralysis grew more noticeable, and bore all the physical symptoms of an affection of the heart.
An identical account in all newspapers gave the first public notification that a murder had been committed:
“At six o’clock yesterday a foreman and a workman from Brenner’s factory found the headless body of a girl in a shed on Bornholmer Street. The body was held by ropes in an unnatural position, and was so tightly wedged in among beams, boards, ladders, barrows, and refuse, that the police officers who were immediately summoned had the greatest difficulty in disentangling their gruesome find. The news spread rapidly through the neighbourhood, and a rumour that increased in definiteness pointed to the body of the murdered girl as that of the sixteen-year-old Ruth Hofmann residing in Stolpische Street. A notification of her disappearance had been lodged at police headquarters several days ago. The theory that it was she who was the victim of a murder ofunparalleled bestiality became a certainty some hours later. A mason’s wife found in the mortar-pit of a building lot on Bellermann Street the severed head, which proved to belong to the body and was identified by several inhabitants of the house on Stolpische Street as that of Ruth Hofmann. Except for stockings and shoes, the body was entirely naked, and its mutilations indicated felonious assault. There is at present no trace of the murderer. But the investigations are being present with all possible care and energy, and it is warmly to be desired that the inhuman brute may soon be turned over to the ministers of justice.”
“At six o’clock yesterday a foreman and a workman from Brenner’s factory found the headless body of a girl in a shed on Bornholmer Street. The body was held by ropes in an unnatural position, and was so tightly wedged in among beams, boards, ladders, barrows, and refuse, that the police officers who were immediately summoned had the greatest difficulty in disentangling their gruesome find. The news spread rapidly through the neighbourhood, and a rumour that increased in definiteness pointed to the body of the murdered girl as that of the sixteen-year-old Ruth Hofmann residing in Stolpische Street. A notification of her disappearance had been lodged at police headquarters several days ago. The theory that it was she who was the victim of a murder ofunparalleled bestiality became a certainty some hours later. A mason’s wife found in the mortar-pit of a building lot on Bellermann Street the severed head, which proved to belong to the body and was identified by several inhabitants of the house on Stolpische Street as that of Ruth Hofmann. Except for stockings and shoes, the body was entirely naked, and its mutilations indicated felonious assault. There is at present no trace of the murderer. But the investigations are being present with all possible care and energy, and it is warmly to be desired that the inhuman brute may soon be turned over to the ministers of justice.”
In the little rear room he had now been sleeping for fourteen hours. The widow Engelschall determined to go to him.
She passed through the half-dark passage-way in which the supplies were stored. Hams and smoked sausages dangled from the ceiling. On the floor stood kegs with sardines, herrings, and pickled gherkins. There were shelves filled with glasses of preserved fruit. The place smelled like a shop.
She stopped, took a little gherkin out of an open keg, and swallowed it without chewing.
The bell of the front-door rang. A sluttish creature, broom in hand, became visible at the end of the passage, and called out to the widow Engelschall that Isolde Schirmacher had come with an important message. “Let her wait,” the widow Engelschall growled. Softly she went into the small room in which Niels Heinrich was sleeping.
He lay on a mattress. A bluish flannel coverlet was over him. His hairy chest was bare; his naked feet protruded. The room was so small that not even a chest of drawers could have been squeezed in. Heaps of malodorous, soiled linen lay in the corners. Tools were scattered about the floor—a plane, a hammer, a saw. Old newspapers increased the litter, and on nails in the wall hung dirty clothes, ties, and a couple of overcoats. On the walls red splotches showed where bedbugs had been killed. On the table stood a candlestick with a piece of candle, an empty beer bottle, and a half empty whiskey bottle.
He lay on his back. The muscles of his face had snapped under an inhuman tension. Between his reddish eyebrows vibrated three dark furrows. His skin was the tint of cheese. On his neck and forehead were beads of sweat. His lids looked like two black holes. The slim, red little beard on his chin moved as he breathed—moved like a separate and living thing, a watchful, hairy insect.
He snored loudly. A bubble of saliva rose now and then from the horrible opening of his lips that showed his decayed teeth.
The widow Engelschall had had plans which had seemed easy to execute outside. Now she dared do nothing. Last night she had stood above him as she stood now. He had begun to murmur in his sleep, and she had hurried out in terror.
It buzzed in her head: What had he done with the two thousand marks which he had embezzled from the builder? She distrusted his assertion that he had spent it all on the cashier of the Metropolitan Moving Picture Theatre. To make up a part of the money and prevent his arrest, she had had to pawn all her linen, two chests of drawers, the furnishings of her waiting-room, and also to mortgage a life insurance policy. Her letter to Privy Councillor Wahnschaffe had not even been answered.
She didn’t believe that he had wasted so much good money on that slut. He must have a few hundreds lying about somewhere. The thought gave her no rest. It was dangerous to let him notice her suspicion; but she could risk entering the room while he slept, burrowing in his clothes, and slipping her hand under his pillow.
But she stood perfectly still. In his presence she was always prepared for the unexpected. If he but opened his mouth, she trembled within. If people came to speak of him, she grew cold all over. If she stopped to think, she knew that it had always been so.
When the village schoolmaster had caught the ten-year-old boy in disgusting practices with a girl of eight, he had said: “He’ll end on the gallows.” When he was an apprentice, he had quarrelled over wages with his employer and threatened to strike him. The man had said: “He’ll end on the gallows.” When he had stolen a silver chain from the desk of the minister’s wife at Friesoythe, and his mother had gone to return it, the lady had said: “He’ll end on the gallows.”
The memories came thick and fast. He had beaten his first mistress, fat Lola who lived in Köpnicker Street, with barbarous cruelty, because at a dance in Halensee she had winked at a postal clerk. When the girl had writhed whining on the floor, and shrieked out in her pain: “There ain’t such another devil in the world!” the widow Engelschall had appealed to the enraged fellow’s conscience, and had said to him: “Go easy, my boy, go easy;” but her advice had been futile. When his second mistress was pregnant, he forced her to go for treatment to an evil woman with whom he was also intimate, and the girl died of the operation. He jeered at the swinish dullness of women who couldn’t do the least things right—couldn’t bear and couldn’t kill a brat properly. No one, fortunately, had heard this remark but the widow Engelschall. Again she had besought him: “Boy, go it a bit easier, do!”
At bottom she admired his qualities. You couldn’t fool with him. He knew how to take care of himself; he could get around anybody. If only he hadn’t always vented his childish rage on harmless things. The expense of it! If the fire didn’t burn properly, he’d tear the oven door from its hinges; if his watch was fast or slow, he’d sling it on the floor so that it was smashed; if meat was not done to his liking, he broke plates with his knife; if a cravat balked in the tying, he’d tear it to shreds, and often his shirt too. Then he laughed his goat-like laugh, and one had to pretend to share his amusement. If he noticed that one was annoyed, he became rabid, spared nothing, and destroyed whatever he could reach.
She wondered what he lived on in ordinary times, when he had had no special piece of good luck. For he seemed always in the midst of plenty, with pockets full of money, and no hesitation to spend and treat. Sometimes he worked—four days a week or five. And he could always get work. He knew his trade, and accomplished in one day more than other workmen did in three. But usually he extended blue Monday until Saturday, and passed his time in unspeakable dives with rogues and loose women.
The widow Engelschall knew a good deal about him. But there was a great deal that she did not know. His ways were mysterious. To ask him and to receive an answer was to be none the wiser. He was always planning something, brewing something. All this commanded the widow Engelschall’s profound respect. He was flesh of her flesh and spirit of her spirit. Yet her anxiety was great; and recently the cards had foretold evil with great pertinacity.
And so she hesitated, full of fear. The palish, yellow skull on the coarse, fustian pillow paralysed her. The slack flesh of her fat neck drooped and shook, as she finally bent and reached down after his coat and waistcoat, which were lying under the chair. She turned away a little so as to conceal her motions. Suddenly she felt a hand on her shoulder and shrieked.
Niels Heinrich had risen noiselessly. He stood there in his shirt, and pierced her with the yellowish flare of his glance. “What’re you doing there, you old slut?” he asked with calm rage. She let the garments fall and retreated toward the door trembling. He stretched forth his arm: “Out!”
His appearance was fear-inspiring. Words died on her lips. With reeling steps she went out.
Isolde Schirmacher was still waiting in the hall. She began to weep when she gave her message: the widow Engelschall was to come to Stolpische Street without delay. Karen was very sick, was dying.
The widow Engelschall seemed incredulous. “Dying? Ah,it ain’t so easy to die. Give her my love, and say I’m coming. I’ll be there in an hour.”
A further account appeared in the papers:
“The mystery which surrounds the murder of young Ruth Hofmann is beginning to clear up. The public will be glad to learn that the efforts of the police have brought about the apprehension of her probable slayer. The latter is Joachim Heinzen of Czernikauer Street, twenty years old, of evil reputation and apparently of not altogether responsible mind. Even before the discovery of the crime his behaviour attracted attention. Within the last few days the evidence against him has increased to the extent of justifying his arrest. When the police frankly accused him of the crime, he first broke down, but immediately thereafter resisted arrest with the utmost violence. Lodged in jail, he made a full and comprehensive confession. When asked to sign the protocol, however, he retracted his entire statement, and denied his guilt with extreme stubbornness. In his demeanour brutish stupidity alternated with remorse and terror. There can hardly be any doubt but that he is the criminal. The first formal examination by the investigating judge entrusted with the case will take place to-day. All the inhabitants of the house in Stolpische Street have been examined, among them a personality whose presence in that locality throws a curious side-light on a widely discussed affair, in which one of the most respected families among our captains of industry is involved.”
“The mystery which surrounds the murder of young Ruth Hofmann is beginning to clear up. The public will be glad to learn that the efforts of the police have brought about the apprehension of her probable slayer. The latter is Joachim Heinzen of Czernikauer Street, twenty years old, of evil reputation and apparently of not altogether responsible mind. Even before the discovery of the crime his behaviour attracted attention. Within the last few days the evidence against him has increased to the extent of justifying his arrest. When the police frankly accused him of the crime, he first broke down, but immediately thereafter resisted arrest with the utmost violence. Lodged in jail, he made a full and comprehensive confession. When asked to sign the protocol, however, he retracted his entire statement, and denied his guilt with extreme stubbornness. In his demeanour brutish stupidity alternated with remorse and terror. There can hardly be any doubt but that he is the criminal. The first formal examination by the investigating judge entrusted with the case will take place to-day. All the inhabitants of the house in Stolpische Street have been examined, among them a personality whose presence in that locality throws a curious side-light on a widely discussed affair, in which one of the most respected families among our captains of industry is involved.”
The hint in the last sentence caused endless talk. The name, which had considerately been left unmentioned, passed from mouth to mouth, no one knew how. The rumour reached Wolfgang Wahnschaffe. Colleagues asked him with cool amazement what his brother had to do with the murder of a Jewish girl in the slums. Even the chief of his Chancellery in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned him, and questioned him with an expression that made him blanch with shame.
He wrote to his father: “I am in the position of a peaceful pedestrian who is in constant danger of a madman attacking him from behind. You are aware, dear father, that in the career I have chosen an unblemished repute is the first requisite. If my reputation and my name are to be constantlyat the public mercy of an insane eccentric, who unhappily bears that name only to stain it, the time has come to use every means, no matter how drastic, to protect oneself. We have had patience. I was for far too long a flickering little flame beside the dazzling but, as is clear now, quite deceptive radiance of Christian. Now that my whole life’s happiness is at stake, as well as the honour of myself and my house, it would be the merest weakness on my part if I were to regard passively all that is happening and still likely to happen. This is likewise the opinion of my friends and of every right thinking person. Some energetic action is necessary if I am to sustain myself in the station which I have achieved, not to mention any other unpleasantness in which we may become involved. Until I hear from you, I shall try to get in touch with Judith, and take counsel with her. Although she ceased from all association with myself, in the most insulting manner and for reasons still dark to me, I believe that she will realize the seriousness of the situation.”
The Privy Councillor received this letter immediately on the heels of a conference with a delegation of strikers. It was some time before the pained amazement it automatically aroused in him really penetrated his consciousness. In any other circumstances the letter’s unfilial, almost impudent tone would have angered him. To-day he gave it no further thought. Swiftly he wrote a telegram in cipher to Girke and Graurock.
The reply which came by special delivery reached him the next evening at his house in Würzburg. Willibald Girke wrote:
“My dear Privy Councillor:—Although it is some time since we have had the pleasure of working under direct orders from you, yet in the hope of renewed relations between us, we have been forward-looking enough to continue our investigations, and to keep up to date in all matters concerning Herr Christian Wahnschaffe at our own risk and expense. Thanks to this efficient farsightedness which we have made our rule, we areable to answer your question with the celerity and precision which the situation calls for.
“We proceed at once to the root of the matter, the murder of the young Jewess. We can give you the consoling assurance that there is no other connection between your son and the foul crime in question than through the warm and much discussed friendship which your son entertained for the murdered girl. Hence he is implicated as a witness, and as such will have to appear in court in due time. This painful necessity is unhappily unavoidable. Who touches pitch is defiled. His close association with proletarians necessarily involved him in such matters and in a knowledge of their affairs. It has been proved and admitted that he once visited the dwelling of the murderer Heinzen. He did so in the company of Ruth Hofmann, and on that occasion a scandalous scene is said to have taken place which was provoked by Niels Heinrich, the brother of Karen Engelschall. This Niels Heinrich is a close friend of Joachim Heinzen, has been kept under close surveillance by the police and examined, and his evidence is said to have been very serious for the accused. It is this connection with Engelschall, casual and innocent as it may be, that will be held against your son, and its disagreeable results cannot yet be absolutely estimated.
“Ruth Hofmann was seen almost daily in your son’s society. Her father’s flat was immediately opposite Karen Engelschall’s, a circumstance which facilitated their friendship. A new party has already moved in, a certain Stübbe with his wife and three children. This Stübbe is a drunkard of the most degraded sort. He is noisy every evening, and treats his family with such cruelty that your son has already found it necessary to interfere on several occasions. We touch upon this fact to illustrate the ease with which, in these dwelling-places, comradeships are established and annoyances incurred. The former tenant, David Hofmann, was indeed peaceful and well-behaved. But he must have been in the utmost difficulties, since he left for America only a few days before the murder. Although telegrams were sent after him at once, he has not been heard from. It is supposed that, for reasons of his own, he emigrated under an assumed name, since the passenger lists of all ships that have sailed within the past two weeks have been searched for his own name in vain. It is possible, moreover, that he sailed from a Dutch or British port. The authorities are investigating.
“Ruth’s young brother had also disappeared for six days, and did not show up until the very evening on which the murder was discovered, when he was found in your son’s room. He has remained there ever since. His state of mind is inexplicable. No urging, neither requests nor commands, could extract from him the slightest hint as to where he had passed the crucial days between Sunday and Thursday. As his silence is prolonged, it assumes a more and more mysterious aspect, and every effort is made to break it in the belief that it may be connected with the murder and may conceal important bits of evidence.
“It has not failed to be observed that your son not only gives no assistance to those who desire to question young Hofmann, but frustrates their purpose whenever he can. Since he is absent from his room during the greater part of the day, a certain Fräulein Schöntag has undertaken to watch over the boy. Recently, however, the necessity for such constant watchfulness seems to have decreased. In the absence of Fräulein Schöntag the boy Hofmann is now often left alone for hours, and only the wife of Gisevius occasionally looks in to see that he is still safely there. Nevertheless a plain clothes detective is keeping the house under close and constant observation.
“From all this it is obvious that, in assuming the care of this enfeebled boy, your son has taken upon himself a new burden, which, in view of his other responsibilities and restricted pecuniary means, will be not a little difficult to bear.We take the liberty of making this observation, in spite of the fact that a real understanding of your son’s intentions and purposes is still lacking to us as to every one.
“This concludes our report. In the hope that our thoroughness and exactness corresponds to your hopes and wishes, and in the expectation of such further directions as you may be pleased to give us, We beg to remain, Most respectfully yours, Girke and Graurock. Per W. Girke.”
Albrecht Wahnschaffe wandered through the rooms of the old house, followed by the dog Freya. To avoid the most crushing of his thoughts, he summoned up the face of the workingman who had been the spokesman of yesterday’s deputation. He recalled with great exactness the brutal features—the protruding chin, the thin lips, the black moustache brushed upward, the cold, sharp glance, the determined expression. And in this face he saw no longer the visage of this particular man who had come to him on this particular and accidental errand, but of a whole world, mysterious, inevitable, terrible, full of menace and coldness and determination.
The energy and circumspection which he had shown in his conference with the delegates seemed to him monstrously futile. The power of no individual would avail in the conflict with that world.
He did not want to think—not of the letter of the private detective agency, nor of its horrible revelations, which seemed dim and turbid scenes of an immeasurably alien life, and yet the life of his son whom he had loved and whom he still loved. Ah, no, he did not want to think of the innumerable lowly and ugly and horrible events which whirled past his mind in a ghostly panorama—the rooms, the courts, the houses full of groaning, wretched bodies. To prevent himself from thinking of these, he turned the pages of a book, hunted through a drawer filled with old letters, and wandered tirelessly from room to room, followed by the dog Freya.
Fleeing from these images, he encountered others that concerned the realm of his work, in which the hopes of all his life were rooted and had ripened, in which the very wheels of his existence had been set in motion. He saw the great shops desolate, the furnaces extinguished, the trip-hammers still, and from a thousand doors and windows arms in gestures of command stretched out toward him who had thought himself the master of them all. It was not the first time that a strike had interfered with the intricate organization of the works. But it was the first time that the feeling came to him that struggle was useless and the end imminent.
And the question rose to his lips: “Why have you done this to me?” And this question he addressed to Christian, as though Christian were guilty of the demands of those who had once been willing slaves, of the empty halls, the extinguished furnaces, the silent hammers—guilty, somehow, because of his presence in those rooms amid harlots and murderers, mad and sick men, and in all those haunts of human vermin. Rage quivered up in him, one of those rare attacks that all but robbed him of consciousness. His eyes seemed filled with blood; he sought a sacrifice and a creature to make atonement, and observed the dog gnawing at a rug. He took a bamboo stick, and beat the animal so that it whined piteously—beat it for minutes, until his arm fell exhausted.
Calm came, and he felt remorse and shame. But the core of his anger remained in his heart, and he carried it about with him like a hidden poison. The gnawing and burning did not cease, and he knew that it would not cease until he had had a reckoning with Christian, until Christian had given some accounting of himself as man to man, son to father, criminal to judge.
The rage corroded his soul. Yet what was the way out? How could he reach Christian? How summon him to an accounting? No active step but would betray his dignity. Was he doomed merely to wait? For weeks and months? The silent rage gnawed at his very life.
Johanna’s absence made Amadeus Voss more and more anxious. Using the methods of a spy, he had discovered that she had left the house of her relatives quite suddenly. On the day after her last visit to Zehlendorf, she had come home silent and sorrowful. Her absence had caused worry, since every one was now thinking of murders and mysterious disappearances. She had refused to tell where she had passed the night, and had simply declared that she was going away altogether. She had resisted all questions and arguments in silence and had quickly packed her possessions. Then a motor car, which she had ordered, had appeared, and with formal words of thanks she had said good-bye. She had told her cousin, with whom she was more intimate than with the rest, that she needed a period of concentration and loneliness, and was moving into a furnished room. She begged that no one try to seek her out. It would be useless and only drive her farther. Indeed, she had threatened more desperate things if she were not left in peace. Nevertheless her frightened kinsmen had followed her track, and had discovered that she had rented a room in Kommandanten Street. But since she was lodging with a respectable woman and seemed guilty of nothing exciting or dangerous, her desire was finally respected, and all vain speculation as to her incomprehensible action abandoned.
These details had been recounted to Voss by a maid whom he had bribed with five marks. With tense face and inflamed heart he went home to consider what he should do. He found a letter from Johanna, who wrote: “I do not know how things will be between us in the future. At this moment I am incapable of any decision. I am not in the least interested either in myself or in my fate, and I have weighty reason for that feeling. Don’t seek me out. I am in Stolpische Street almost all day long, but don’t seek me out if you have any interest in me or if you want me to have the least interestin you in the future. I don’t want to see you; I can’t bear to listen to you at present. The experience I have had has been too dreadful and too unexpected. You would find me changed in a way that you would not like at all. Johanna.”
Pale with rage, he immediately rode into the city as far as the station on Schönhauser Avenue. When he reached Stolpische Street it was nine o’clock in the evening. Frau Gisevius told him that Fräulein Schöntag had left half an hour ago. He looked into Christian’s room, and saw an unknown boy sitting at the table. He drew the woman aside, and asked her who it was. She was amazed that he didn’t know, and told him that it was the brother of the murdered girl. She added that Wahnschaffe was quite unlike himself since the tragedy. He walked about like a lost soul. If you talked to him he either didn’t answer at all or answered at random. He didn’t touch his breakfast which she brought him every morning. Often he would stand for half an hour on the same spot with lowered head. She was afraid he was losing his mind. A couple of days ago she had met him in Rhinower Street, and there, in bright daylight, he had been talking out loud to himself so that the passers-by had laughed. Yesterday he had left without a hat, and her little girl had run after him with it. He had stared at the child for a while as if he didn’t understand. Shortly after that he had returned home with several of his friends. Suddenly she had heard him cry out and had rushed into his room. She had found him on his knees before the others, sobbing like a little child. Then he had struck the floor in his despair and had cried out that this thing could not be and dared not be true, that it wasn’t possible and he couldn’t endure it. Fräulein Schöntag had been there too. But she had been silent and so had the others. They had just sat there and trembled. This attack had been caused by some young men imprudently telling him that this was the day set for the official examination and autopsy of Ruth’s body. He had wanted to hasten to the court. Theyhad restrained him with difficulty, and finally had to assure him that he would be too late, that everything would be over. All night long he had walked up and down in his room, while Michael had been lying on the leather sofa. The two hadn’t exchanged one word all night. She had slipped out of her room and listened repeatedly—not a syllable. At five o’clock in the morning Fräulein Schöntag had come; at seven Lamprecht and another student. They had persuaded him to go out to Treptow with them to spend the day. He had neither consented nor refused, and they had just dragged him along. Friends of Ruth Hofmann had come too and staid till noon—a woman and a young man. They sometimes came in the evening too, after Fräulein Schöntag had gone, so that Michael need not be alone. No one knew what was going to be done with the boy. His condition hadn’t changed in the least. He hadn’t even undressed, and if Fräulein Schöntag hadn’t known just how to get around him, he would not even have let anybody brush the mud from his clothes or wash his hands and face. Sometimes a red-haired gentleman would come to see the boy. She had heard that he was a baron and a friend of Wahnschaffe. This gentleman had brought a chessboard day before yesterday, because some one had said that Michael knew how to play chess and had often played with his sister. But when the chessmen had been set up, Michael had only shuddered and had not touched them. The board was still there on the table. Herr Voss could go and see for himself.
The woman would have gossipped on and on. But Voss left her with a silent nod. He had grown thoughtful. What he had heard of Christian had made him thoughtful. Careless of his direction, he turned toward Exerzier Square. He brooded and doubted. His imagination refused to see Christian as the woman had pictured him. It seemed an absolute contradiction of the possible, a mockery of all experience. Grief, such grief—and Christian? Despair, such despair—and Christian? The world was rocking on its foundations. Some mystery mustbe behind it all. Under the pressure of huge forces the very elements may change their character, but it was inconceivable to him that blood should issue from a stone, or a heart be born where none had been.
Forced back against his will, he returned to Stolpische Street. Suddenly he saw Johanna immediately in front of him. He called out to her; she stopped and nodded, and showed no surprise. But his hasty, whispered questions left her silent. Her face was of a transparent pallor. At the door of the house she stopped and considered. Then she walked back into the court to the window of Christian’s room. She wanted to look in, but a hanging had been drawn. She hurried into the hall, rang the bell, and exchanged some words with Frau Gisevius. Then she came back. “I must go upstairs,” she said, “I must see how Karen is.” She did not indicate that Voss was to wait. He waited with all the more determination. From the dwellings about he heard music, laughter, the crying of children, the dull whirr of a sewing-machine. At last Johanna came back and returned to the street at his side. She said in a helpless tone: “The poor woman will hardly outlive the night, and Christian isn’t at home. What is to be done?”
He did not answer.
“You must understand what is happening to me,” Johanna said, softly and insistently.
“I understand nothing,” Voss replied dully. “Nothing—except that I suffer, suffer beyond endurance.”
Johanna said harshly: “You don’t count.”
They were near the Humboldt Grove. It was cold, but Johanna sat down on a bench. She seemed wearied; exertions hurt her delicate body like wounds. Shyly Voss took her hand, and asked: “What is it, then?”
“Don’t,” she breathed, and withdrew her hand. After a long silence she said: “People always thought him insensitive. Some even said that that was the reason for his success withall who came near him. It was a nice theory. I myself never believed it. Most theories are wrong; why should this one have been right? There is so much vain talk about people; it is all painful and futile, both when it asserts and when it denies. His society wasn’t, I grant you, spiritually edifying. If one was deeply moved by something, one somehow, instinctively, hid it from him and felt a sense of embarrassment. And now—this! You can’t imagine it. And how am I to describe it? All the time, that first evening while he was taking care of Michael, he hadn’t yet been told anything. At nine or half-past he went up to Karen’s, intending to come back in an hour, but he came earlier. There were people loitering in the yard, and they told him. Then he came into the room, quite softly. He came in and....” She took out a handkerchief, pressed it to her eyes, and wept very gently.
Voss let her cry for a little while. Then he asked very tensely: “He came in and——? And what?”
Johanna kept her eyes covered, and went on: “You had the feeling: This is the end for him, the end of all content, of smiles and laughter—the end. In fifteen minutes his face had aged by twenty years. I looked at it for just a moment; then my courage failed me. You may think it fantastic, but I tell you the whole room was one pain, the air was pain and so was the light. It’s the truth. Everything hurt; everything one thought or saw hurt. But he was absolutely silent, and his expression was like that of one who was straining his eyes to read some illegible script. And that was the most painful thing of all.”
She fell silent and Voss did not break this silence. Enviously and rancorously he reflected: “We shall have to convince ourselves that blood can issue from a stone; we must see and hear and test.” Deliberately he fortified his will to doubt. The explanations which he gave in his own mind were of an unworthy character. Not to provoke Johanna he feigned toshare her faith; and yet there was something about her story that stirred his vitals and made him afraid.
Johanna needed some support. She froze in her new freedom; she distrusted her strength to bear it. With a touch of dread and longing she wondered that no one dragged her back by force into the comfort of a sheltered, care-free, secure life.
She was not sorry to have Amadeus walking at her side. Ah, it was inconsistent and weak and faithless to one’s own self, but there was such a horror in being alone. Yet her gesture of farewell seemed utterly final when they reached the house in Kommandanten Street where she lived. Amadeus Voss, suspecting her weakness and her melancholy, accompanied her to the dark stairs, and there grasped her with such violence as though he meant to devour her. She merely sighed.
At that moment an irresistible desire for motherhood welled up in her. She did not care through whose agency, nor whether his kiss inspired disgust or delight. She wanted to become a mother—to give birth to something, to create something, not to be so empty and cold and alone, but to cling to something and seem more worthy to herself and indispensable to another being. Had not this very man who held her like a beast of prey spoken of the yearning of the shadow for its body? Suddenly she understood that saying.
Sombre and searching and strong was the look she gave him when they stepped out upon the street again. Then she went with him.
Karen was still alive in the morning. Death had a hard struggle with her. Late at night she had once more fought herself free of its embrace; now she lay there, exhausted by the effort. Her arms, her hands, her breasts were covered with sores filled with pus. Many had broken open.
Three women rustled through the room—Isolde Schirmacher, the widow Spindler, and the wife of a bookbinder who livedin the rear. They whispered, fetched things back and forth, waited for the physician and for the end.
Karen heard their whispers and their tread with hatred. She could not speak; she could scarcely make herself understood; but she could still hate. She heard the screeching and rumbling in the flat that had been the Hofmanns’ and was now the Stübbes’. The drunkard’s rising in the morning was as baleful to his wife and children as his going to bed at night. All the misery that he caused penetrated the wall, and aroused in Karen memories of equal horrors in dim and distant years.
Yet for her there was really but one pain and one misery—Christian’s absence. For days he had paid her only short visits; during the last twenty-four hours, none at all. Dimly she knew of the murder of the Jewish girl, and dimly felt that Christian was changed since then; but she felt so terribly desolate without him that she tried not to think of that. His absence was like a fire in which her still living body was turned to cinders. It cried out at her. In the midst of the moaning of her agony she admonished herself to be patient, raised her head and peered, let it drop back upon the pillows, and choked in the extremity of her woe.
The door opened and she gave a start. It was Dr. Voltolini, and her face contorted itself.
There was little that the physician could do. The complications that had appeared and had affected the lungs destroyed every vestige of hope. Nothing was left to do but ease her pain by increasing the doses of morphine. “And, why save such a life,” Dr. Voltolini was forced to reflect, as he saw the terrible aspect of the woman still fighting death, “a life so complete and superfluous and unclean?”
It was the third occasion on which he had not found Christian here, yet he felt the old need of some familiar talk with him. He himself was a reserved man. To initiate a stranger into the secrets of his fate had been to him, heretofore, an unfamiliar temptation. But in Christian’s presence that temptation assailed him strongly and he suffered from it; and this was especially true since he had witnessed an apparently meaningless scene.
A journeyman of her father of whom she was fond had given Isolde Schirmacher a ring with an imitation ruby. Near the kitchen door she had shown Christian the ring in her delight. Dr. Voltolini was just coming out of the sick room. She took the ring from her finger, let the worthless stone sparkle in the light, and asked Christian whether it wasn’t wonderful. And Christian had smiled in his peculiar way and had answered: “Yes, it is very beautiful.” The widow Spindler, who stood in the kitchen door, had laughed a loud laugh. But an expression of such gratitude had irradiated the girl’s face that, for a moment, it had seemed almost lovely.
On the stairs the widow Engelschall met Dr. Voltolini. She stopped him and asked him his opinion of Karen’s condition. He shrugged his shoulders and told her there was no hope. It was a question of hours.
The widow Engelschall had long had her suspicions of Karen. Whenever she entered the room Karen grew restless, avoided her glance, and pulled the covers up to her chin. The widow knew what it was to have a bad conscience. She scented a mystery and determined to fathom it. There was no time to lose. If she hesitated now she might be too late and regret it forever after. Undoubtedly the secret was that Wahnschaffe had given her money, which, according to an old habit, she kept concealed about her person in an old stocking or chemise or even sewn up in the mattress. All the money that man had couldn’t have just vanished. He had probably put aside a few dozen thousand-mark notes or some securities. And who else should have them but Karen? If one put two and two together, considered his craziness and her behaviour, the matter seemed pretty clear, and the thing to do now was to prevent mischief. For if she didn’t happento be present at the moment of Karen’s death, all sorts of people would be about, and the treasure would slip into the pocket of God knows who. You couldn’t read the theft in the thief’s face. These were the things that presented themselves very strongly to the widow Engelschall on her way to Stolpische Street.
Karen had her own presentiment regarding her mother’s thoughts. As her illness progressed her fear for the pearls rose and rose. They no longer seemed safe upon her body. She might lose consciousness and people might handle her and discover them. These fears disturbed her sleep. She often awakened with a start, stared wildly, and smothered a scream in her throat. She had accustomed herself to keep her hands under the covers, and her grasp of the pearls became mechanically convulsive whenever her senses sank into sleep or swoon. A frightful nightmare which she had, presented to her all the possibilities of danger. People came. Whoever wanted to, simply stepped into her room. She couldn’t prevent it; she could not get up and latch the door. She guarded herself most carefully from the doctor. She trembled before his eye, and the very pores of her body seemed to cling from below to the coverlet lest he turn it suddenly back.
She let the pearls wander about—now under her pillow, now under the sheet, sometimes upon her naked breast where they touched the open wounds. Becoming aware of this contact, she addressed herself with the cruel mockery of sombre pain: “What’s left of you? What are you now? A leprous carrion—ruined and done for and disgusted with yourself.”
Gradually she had become indifferent to the pecuniary value of the pearls, even though, during a sleepless night, in answer to her ceaseless questions, Christian had given her an insight into it which surpassed her wildest guesses. The figures were mere empty numbers to her. She shuddered, shook her head, and let the matter slide. The jewels had quite another effect on her now, and this increased in power as the old glamourof their mere value faded. At first the pearls had been a symbol and a lamentation over her fate; their lustre glimmered to her from that other shore of life from which no breath or message had ever before floated to her. But now they no longer stirred her to envy and wrath as they had once done, but only to regret over that all of life which she had wasted and flung aside. And she had wasted her life and flung it aside, because she had known nothing of beauty or loveliness or joy or adornment or, she could truly say, of earth and heaven. She could not re-live her ruined life; there was no other, and this one was gone.
But it seemed to her, as she lay there and brooded and let her flesh disintegrate, as though her lost earth and lost heaven were given back to her in every single pearl and in the whole string. Everything was in the pearls—the children she had conceived and born and lost in hatred, the poverty-stricken, all but unfulfilled dreams, the longing she had faintly felt for some human being, the wizened love, the jaded light, the petty hopes, the small delight. Everything crystallized in the pearls and became a soul. All that she had missed and gambled or thrown away or never reached, all that had been darkened for her or driven from her by want and sorrow—all this became a soul. And to this soul she was immeasurably devoted as she lay there and brooded and let her flesh disintegrate. For this soul was the soul of Christian. His soul was in the rope of pearls. It was this that she grasped and clung to, and wanted to possess even in her grave. Her blue eyes, under the narrow forehead and the strawy dishevelled hair, had the fetish-worshipper’s glow.
The widow Engelschall’s first concern was to get the women out of Karen’s room. To succeed she had to make her command abundantly clear. She hissed at the Schirmacher girl:“Would you mind taking your snub-nose out of this here place?” Isolde went, but she felt sure that the old woman had evil intentions.
When the widow Engelschall approached the bed, she saw that there was but just time for her to use the last glimmer of her daughter’s consciousness. If she had miscalculated—well, no harm was done, and she would be the first one, at all events, to have access to the dead woman’s body. Only there must be no shilly-shallying.
She began to talk. She sat down on a chair, bent far over toward Karen, and spoke in a raised voice so that no word should escape the dying woman. She said that she had meant to bring along some pastry, but the pastry-cook’s shop had been closed. In the evening, however, she intended to boil a chicken in rice or make a Styrian pudding with apple-sauce. That refreshed the stomach and improved the digestion. Sick people needed strengthening food, and one mustn’t be stingy with them. Stinginess, she declared, had never been a fault of hers, anyhow. No one could say that. And she had always been ready to do the right thing by her children. It had been toil and trouble enough, and she hadn’t counted on gratitude. You didn’t get that in this world anyhow, no more from your children than from Tom, Dick, or Harry.
Beset by death as she was, Karen heard only the tone of this hypocritical speech. She moved her arms. An instinct told her that her mother wanted something; a last effort at reflection told her what that was, and a last impulse warned her not to betray herself. She forced herself to lie still and not to let an eyelid quiver. But the widow Engelschall knew that she was on the right track. She herself, she continued, had never striven after riches. If ever a little superfluity had come to her, she had shared it with others. You couldn’t take anything into the grave with you anyhow, and though you clung to what you had like iron, it didn’t do you no good in the end. So it was more sensible and nobler too to give it up,and live to share the pleasure of the people you gave it to, and listen to their praises. Didn’t Karen remember, she asked, how when that old hag of a Kränich woman had died and eighty-seven pieces of gold had been found in her straw-mattress—didn’t she remember how, amid the joy, people had railed at the stingy beast? No one had shed a tear over her. They had consigned her to hell where she belonged.
Having said this, the widow Engelschall stretched out her hand, and with apparent carelessness began to feel about the pillow. The rope of pearls lay under it. She had not yet reached it; but Karen thought she had grasped it, and with feeble hands fought off the hands of her mother. Breathing stertorously, she raised herself a little, and threw herself across the pillow. The widow Engelschall murmured: “Aha, there we have it!” She was sure now. Swiftly she thrust her hand farther and pulled out an end of the rope of pearls. She uttered a dull cry. Her fat face oozed sweat and turned crimson, for she recognized at once the fabulous value of what she held. Her eyes started from their sockets, saliva dripped from her mouth. She grasped what she held more and more firmly, as Karen rested the whole weight of her body upon the pillow, stretched out her hands, dug her nails into her mother’s wrists, and whined a long, piteous whine. But in spite of her ghastly display of strength she succumbed in that unequal struggle. Already the widow Engelschall, uttering a low howl, had torn the pearls from their hiding-place; she was about to flee from Karen’s inarticulate screeching and blind rage and fierce moans and chattering teeth, when the door opened and Christian entered.
The women in the hall had noticed that something strange and fearful was taking place in Karen’s room. The struggle between mother and daughter had not lasted long enough to give them a chance to make a decision or fight down their fear of the old woman. But they received Christian with frightened faces and pointed toward the door. They wanted to followhim into the room; but since he paid no attention to them and closed the door behind him, they remained where they were and listened. But they heard no sound.
Christian approached Karen’s bed. He had taken in what was happening. Silently he took the pearls from the old woman’s hands. Wrought up and inflamed by greed as she was, she did not dare make a gesture of resistance. On his face there was an expression which beat down her boiling rage at his interference. It was a strange expression—a lordly mournfulness was in it, a proud absorption, a smile that was remote, a something estranged and penetrating and inviolable. He laid the pearls upon Karen’s breast, and took both of her hands into his. She looked up to him—relieved, redeemed. Her body quivered in convulsions, but was eased as he held her hands. Freezing and icy under the touch of death, she thrust herself nearer to him, babbling, moaning, trembling in every limb, and with a hot moisture in her eyes. And he did not recoil. He did not feel any repulsion at the malodorousness of the dripping sores. That smile still on his face, he embraced her and gave her a last warmth against his breast, as though she were a little bird whom the storm had blown hither. At last she lay very quiet, without motion or sound.
And thus she died in his arms.
Broken by his wild dissipations, Felix Imhof had to halt at last. His strength was at an end.
He summoned physicians, and with a smile begged for the truth. The last whom he consulted, a famous specialist, bade him be prepared for the worst, since his spinal marrow was affected. “Tubercular?” Imhof asked objectively. “Yes, exactly,” was the answer.
“All right, old boy! Fifth act, last scene,” he said to himself. Since fever ensued, and exhaustion alternated with violentpain, he took to his bed, had the windows darkened and the mirrors covered, and stared into space through the long hours with the expression of a frightened child.
He had never been able to get along without people. As far back as his memory went, his life had been as crowded as a fair. He had been hail-fellow-well-met with every one; they had all clung to him, and he had taken great pains to mean something to them all and to meet their wishes. And who was left to him now? No one. Whom did he desire? No one. Who would mourn for him? No man and no woman.
“I wonder what they’ll say about me when I’m gone?” he kept wondering. “Oh, yes, Imhof, they’ll say, don’t you recall him? Good fellow, pleasant companion, nothing slack about him, always in good spirits, always on the lookout for something new—a little touched, maybe. You must remember him. Why, he looked so and so and so. He talked like an Italian priest, wasted his money like an idiot, and drank like a fish.”
And in spite of such reminders many would not remember, but shrug their shoulders and begin to talk about something else.
He had neither father nor mother, sister nor brother, no relative and, in reality, no friends. His very birth was obscure. Its mystery would never be unveiled now. Perhaps he came of the dregs of mankind, perhaps of noble blood. But this mystery had, so far as he was concerned, neither romance nor charm. Only fate, for the sake of clearness, had stamped his being thus as that of a solitary, alienated, and self-dependent creature.
He had neither root nor connection nor bond. He was himself; nothing else. A personality fashioned by its moment in time—unique and complete in itself.
There was not even a servant who was faithful to him through personal devotion or through attachment to his house. No soul belonged to him—only things for which he had paid.
He had given much unselfish devotion to artists and works of art. A beautiful poem, an excellent picture had given his mind the elasticity and his mood the serenity which had compensated him for all the weariness and flatness of his environment. But seeking now to recall the impressions that had seemed unforgettable to him, he faced emptiness. The bubbling spring was choked with stone and sand. Did art, which he had loved so truly, sustain the spirit no better than some fleeting roadside adventure? What did it lack?
From the wreck of his fortune a few treasures had remained—a painting by Mantegna, the Three Kings from the East, an early Greek statue of Dionysos, a statue by Rodin, and a still-life by Von Gogh. He had these exquisite things and several others brought into his room, and sought to lose himself in the contemplation of them. But the old happy ecstasy would not return. The colours seemed dull and the marble without warmth or life. What had passed from these things? What change had come over them?
On the table beside his bed stood an hour-glass. He watched the reddish sand, fluid and swift as water, flicker through an eye from the upper bulb into the lower. It took twelve minutes. Leaning on his arms he watched it and reversed the bulbs whenever the upper one was empty. And again his eyes had the expression of a frightened child’s.
One day, as he was watching the running of the sand in the hour-glass, he said aloud to himself: “Death? What’s the meaning of that? It’s nonsense.”
It was an absurd word and idea, and he could not grasp it or penetrate it. Scarcely had he begun to gain the slightest conception of dying when he found that that very conception started from the idea of life. One had always been in space and was to leave it now. Yet wherever one passed to, there must be space also. And one could not think the concept space without also thinking oneself. Well, then....
A shiver passed over him. Then he smiled avidly. Hethought of the delights that had been his—the fullness and wealth of pleasure and expectation, of ecstasy and triumph; of the feasts and revels and journeys and enterprises and games; of all the merry, multicoloured, changeful conflict. How delightful it had been to rise in the morning with one’s straight limbs; how delightful that wheels whirred and newsboys shrilled and bells clanged and dogs barked; and how exquisite it had been when a young woman, ready for love, loosened her hair and dropped her garments and her white flesh gleamed like the flesh of a fruit. Ah, and the pleasant comrades and the splendid horses, and the homecomings at night, just a little drunk. In the hall one longed for the first step of the stairs; it seemed so comfortable, logical, inviting. Upstairs the windows were open, and in one of them was a bunch of flowers. At all times and in all places one felt: “I am here, in the midst of it, lord of the foam and music of life. I command and life obeys, and there will be a to-morrow and a day after to-morrow, and endless days, like slender trees along an avenue.” And at such moments he had felt tender toward himself and flattered by his own breath, and had fed on air and light and clouds and men and songs. And everything had been goodly to his taste—even the ugly things and the rain and the very puddles in the street. For he was alive ... alive....
He reversed the hour-glass and fell back among the pillows. His eyes became aware of a small, grey spider that crept up the purple silk of the wall-hangings. It frightened him. Suddenly the thought struck him: “It is possible, even likely, that the spider will still exist when I am gone.” This reflection frightened him beyond expression, and he watched the spider’s slow progress with breathless suspense.
“Is it conceivable,” he thought, “that the horrible and trivial spider will be in a world from which I am gone? It is maddening. I have never believed in it and cannot believe in it—in unconsciousness and darkness, and the damp and theearth and the worms. And the spider is to live and I am not? Not I who filled all space with my being and my vitality? Is there any philosophy or religion or conviction that is not smashed to bits against this one fact? Supposing there were someone who had the power to let me go on living as a street-sweeper, a beggar, a jail-bird, despised, deformed, absurd, impotent. It almost seems to me that I would accept life even at that price. Good God, where do such thoughts lead one? What shameful ideas are these for a man who has always insisted on cleanliness and honour! Have I ever slunk away before an affront or failed to uphold my dignity? And yet I know that I would choose life at any price. The pains of the soul? Much I care about them! I would welcome grief, disappointment, bitterness, hatred, and loss—so I could but live ... but live....”
An hour later Weikhardt was announced. Imhof considered whether he should see him. He had denied himself to all callers during the past few days, but he could not make up his mind to refuse to see the painter, whom he had always liked uncommonly well.
“Is it Eliphaz, Bildad, or Zophar who comes to comfort Job?” he addressed Weikhardt. “You remember the incident, don’t you? ‘They lifted up their eyes afar off, and knew him not, they lifted up their voice and wept; and they rent every one his mantle, and sprinkled dust upon their heads toward heaven.’”
Weikhardt smiled. But when his eyes had become accustomed to the semi-darkness of the room and he saw the emaciated face, his mocking impulse fled.
For a while their talk was superficial. Weikhardt told about his marriage, his work, his vain efforts after economic security, and finally gossipped a little. Imhof listened with wavering attention. Suddenly he asked with apparent equanimity: “How is that marvellous female salamander?”
“What salamander? Whom do you mean?”
“Whom should I mean? Sybil, of course! Wasn’t it the maddest and wildest thing that the trivial word of a soulless creature should have brought swift decision into the slow process of my fate? Was it Providence? Was it so written in the stars?”
“I don’t understand,” Weikhardt murmured.
“Don’t you? Didn’t you know that the horrible little wooden fay called me a ‘nigger,’ and that I revenged myself in my characteristic way by playing a trump that lost me the whole game? I went and sought the company to which her icy scorn had sent me. I slept with a Negro woman to shame the white girl and break her vanity, at least in my imagination. Wasn’t it sublime? And you didn’t know it?”
“I knew of nothing,” Weikhardt murmured in astonishment. A long silence followed.
Imhof continued in a changed voice. “The things that followed weren’t so different from former experiences. But the central nerve was sick and the source of life poisoned. Sometimes I’m tempted to hasten the disgustingly slow execution by a clean bullet. It’s too undignified to have death glide about you as an overfed cat circles around a trapped mouse. Or else one could do the Sardanapalus act—light fireworks and burn the house down, and make one’s exit with a grandiose gesture.”
“It would be cheap and meretricious,” Weikhardt said, “you’d never forgive another for it.”
“I’m not capable of it in reality. I cling desperately to the depressing rag of life that’s left. Ah, to live at all—what that means!” He bit into his pillow, and moaned: “I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die!”
Weikhardt arose to approach the bed. But Imhof beckoned him passionately away. “Thus do I expiate,” he moaned. “Thus is the great devourer being devoured. Thus Time hurls me from its bosom. Look upon me writhing here and crying for pardon, and go out and tell the others about it. Give themmy love! And give my love to all dear boys and girls! Good-bye, my friend, good-bye!”
Weikhardt took his leave without a word.
Karen’s body had been given back to the earth. Many of the people from the house had accompanied it to the grave. Christian thought he had also observed Johanna and Voss.
On the way home Dr. Voltolini walked beside him. For a while they did not speak. Then Christian with the perception of something unpleasant at his back, suddenly turned around. Ten paces behind he saw Niels Heinrich Engelschall. As Christian stopped, the other stopped too, and pretended to look at a shop window.
In the cemetery Christian had escaped from the friends who had accompanied him. Now, too, he would have preferred loneliness; but he did not want to wound the physician.
Continuing a conversation which they had started before the funeral, Dr. Voltolini said: “Stübbe ought to be separated from his family and placed in an institution. At any time delirium tremens might break out and he might kill the whole crowd. And even as it is, the poor woman can’t endure his cruelty much longer. She’s at the end of her strength.”
“I’ve interfered several times during the past few days,” Christian answered softly. “Other neighbours helped too. A man like that is worse than a wolf. The children stand around and tremble.”
“And it’s so difficult,” said Dr. Voltolini, “to get the authorities to take any preventive measures. The law is unreasonably severe. Once a misfortune has taken place, it enters more mercilessly than is necessary; but it can never be moved to prevent anything.”
Again Christian turned around. Niels Heinrich was stillfollowing. Again he stopped, looked about him indifferently, and spat on the sidewalk.
“It is never a question of what one knows or desires, but always of what one does,” Christian said, walking on again.
“And even what one has done, though it be inspired by the purest motives and the strictest sense of duty, is spattered with mud, and one must suffer for it as for a crime,” Dr. Voltolini said bitterly.
“Has that been your experience?” Christian asked, with apparently conventional sympathy, but with his aware and listening glance.
“I don’t like to talk about it,” Dr. Voltolini said, with a saddened mien. “I haven’t done so to any one here so far. You’re the first and only one who have made me want to talk. I felt that way so soon as I had met you. It isn’t as though you could advise or help me; it’s far too late for either. My misfortune has done its worst and has receded into the past. But constant silence gnaws at me, and I can escape a period of paralysis if I can tell you the story of what happened to me.”
Christian shook his head very slightly in his astonishment. Many people had already said similar words to him, and he did not understand their motive.
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 awayfor 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, andheal 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.”