Christian said: “I really don’t remember precisely. I do remember the ring and the girl’s pleasure in it, but I can’t tell you to-day just why I smiled. It would have been better, by the way, if the girl had been less happy. A few days later she lost the ring, and the poor thing cried for hours. Itwould have been better if I had said to her: ‘Neither the ring nor the stone is worth anything.’ I should have told her to throw it away. On such occasions it is almost always better to say to people, ‘Throw it away.’ Perhaps I smiled because that is what I wanted to say and didn’t have the courage.”
“That’s how it looked,” Dr. Voltolini said quickly and with a touch of excitement. “That’s the impression I had.”
“Why speak of it?” Christian said.
They had reached the house on Stolpische Street. Niels Heinrich, who had followed them, disappeared among the vehicles on the street.
Dr. Voltolini looked at the pavement, and said with embarrassment and hesitation: “You could do a great deal for me in the sense you suggested, if I might call on you every now and then. It sounds strange and like a confession of weakness, coming from a man of my years to one of yours. I can’t justify my request, but I know I should be helped. I would get on and be more reconciled to my fate and work harder at the re-establishment of my life.” His eyes were turned tensely to Christian’s face.
Christian lowered his head, and after some reflection answered: “Your request is very flattering. I should be glad to serve you; I hope I may. But in order not to put you off with empty phrases, I should tell you that I shall be deeply preoccupied in the immediate future—not only inwardly, I am always that, but outwardly too. I am confronted with a difficult task—a terribly difficult task.”
Struck by Christian’s terrible seriousness Dr. Voltolini said: “I don’t mean to be inquisitive. But may I ask what that task is?”
“To find the man who murdered Ruth Hofmann.”
“How?” The physician was utterly astonished. “But I thought that the ... murderer had been arrested.”
Christian shook his head. “It is not the right man,” he said, softly but with assurance. “I saw him. I saw himwhen he appeared before the investigating judge. I knew him before the crime too. He is not the murderer.”
“That sounds strange,” said Dr. Voltolini. “Is that merely your personal opinion, or do the authorities also——?”
“It’s not an opinion,” Christian said meditatively. “Perhaps it’s more, perhaps it’s less—quite as one chooses. I don’t know what the authorities suspect. Undoubtedly they consider Joachim Heinzen the murderer. He has confessed, but I consider his confession false.”
“Did you express that opinion before the judge?”
“No. How could I have done that? I haven’t even a legitimate suspicion. Only I know that the man who is now held is not the murderer.”
“But how do you expect to find the real criminal, if you haven’t even a suspicion?”
“I don’t know, but I must do it.”
“You ... you must? What does that mean?”
Christian did not answer. He raised his eyes and held out a friendly hand to Dr. Voltolini. “And so, if you should come and not find me, don’t be angry at me. We shall meet again.”
The doctor clasped his hand firmly and silently.
Christian went into the house and up to Karen’s rooms. Fifteen minutes later Niels Heinrich mounted the same stairs.
A fleck of sunlight trembled on the opposite wall of the courtyard. Its reflection lighted up the mirror over the leather sofa. A feeble fire was burning in the oven. Before going to the funeral Johanna Schöntag had thrown in a few small shovelfuls of coal. The fire crackled a little, but the room was growing cold.
Michael Hofmann sat in front of the chessboard. The student Lamprecht had set him a problem, and Michael stared at the board and the chessmen. Occasionally his thoughtsconverged in a will to find a solution, then they went wandering again. He had now succeeded in turning his mind toward outward things sufficiently to remember the chessmen and their positions. Even in the darkness of the night, during which he slept but rarely, he saw the figures of the two kings.
The fleck of sunshine sank lower on the wall, and the snow on the pavement glittered. Michael looked out through the window, and the gleaming of the snow caused his eyes to move. The whiteness—why did it torment him? He wanted to wipe it out or blow it away or cover it. Whiteness was a lie.
He got up and walked through the room. The glitter of the sunlight came insolently from the whiteness, and the room was filled with its lying shimmer. He hated it.
He stopped and listened and his eyelids twitched. Something floated before his mind, knocked at its door—not so much a forgotten thing as one suppressed and throttled. From his trousers pocket he drew forth a round, tightly-rolled, blackish brown object. He looked at it and began to shudder. For a moment his eyes had the same brooding look as when he regarded the chessmen. Then his fingers grew restless, and, growing paler and paler, he sought to unroll the object in his hand. It was a cloth, a handkerchief. Once it had been white; now it was drenched in blood.
It had been white, but now it was black with blood; and the blood had congealed so that the cloth had the toughness of leather and was hard to unfold. At last the surface appeared, and in one corner of it the embroidered initials, R. H.
“Whiteness is evil and redness is evil,” Michael whispered to himself, with the look of a beaten dog. He was struggling with a temptation, hunting for a way out, and all his being spoke of despair. He looked about him, hurried to the oven, opened the little iron door, and threw in the blood-drenched handkerchief. When the swift flame flared up he sighed with relief, and stood still and quivering.
No one was in the rooms. The bed in which Karen had died had been taken away.
Christian walked up and down for a while. Then he sat down beside the table and rested his head on his hand. He thought: “Ruth has summoned Karen, as she will summon many more. What is the world without Ruth? For Ruth was the kernel and the soul of all things. And what is it that happened to Ruth, what really happened? Something unspeakably horrible, immeasurably depraved, but also impenetrably mysterious. To fathom it, one must subordinate every other feeling and occupation, all delight, all pain, all plans, and even eating and sleeping and seeing.”
He reflected over the confusion that Karen’s death had created within him. There was so much empty space about him since she was gone. The empty space cried out after her and was not to be silenced. No mournfulness arose that was not reluctant. Her existence had been as violent and garish as a burning mountain. The earth had swallowed the mountain, and in its place stretched a great waste.
Steps resounded, the door opened, and Niels Heinrich came in.
He nodded contemptuously toward the table at which Christian sat. He had pushed his bowler hat far back and kept it on his head. He looked about like some one examining quarters that had been advertised to be let. He walked into the second room, came back, stood impudently in front of Christian, and made a grimace.
“What do you want?” Christian asked.
He had come for Karen’s things, Niels Heinrich announced. The widow had sent him. He always called his mother that. His falsetto voice penetrated to every corner of the room. Everything of Karen’s would have to be handed over to him, he said, and counted and taken away.
Very calmly Christian said: “I shall not hinder you. Do as you please.”
Niels Heinrich whistled softly through his teeth. He turned around and saw Karen’s wooden box standing in a corner. He pulled it into the middle of the room. It was locked. First he struck it with his fist, then with his heel. Christian said it was not necessary to use force; Isolde Schirmacher had the key. Rudely Niels Heinrich swung around, and asked whether the pearls were in it. As Christian was silent in his surprise, the other added with growing irritation that the widow had told him a long story about a rope of pearls the size of pigeon’s eggs. He wanted to know who’d inherit those? Undoubtedly they’d belonged to Karen, had been given to her, in fact. Who’d inherit them, he’d like to know! Surely the family who were the rightful heirs. He hoped there’d be no damned nonsense on that point.
“You are mistaken,” Christian said coldly. “The pearls did not belong to Karen. They belong to my mother, and I am bound by a promise to return them. At the first opportunity I shall send them to Frankfort.”
Niels Heinrich stood quite still for a while, and a green rage seethed in his eyes. “Is that so?” he said finally. The gentleman wanted to liquidate the firm now, did he? First take a poor, stupid wench and trick her out and make a fool of her year in and year out, and then, when she was gone, not even put up something decent for her mourning family. Well, the gentleman needn’t think he’d get off so cheaply as long as he, Niels Heinrich, was on deck. And if the gentleman didn’t come across with a good pile of shekels, he’d live to see something that’d surprise him; he’d find out, so sure’s his name was Niels Heinrich Engelschall. He laughed a short harsh laugh and spread out his legs.
“I know who you are, and I’m not afraid of you,” said Christian, with an almost cheerful expression.
Niels Heinrich was taken aback. His glance, which hadgrown unsteady, fell upon Christian’s delicate, narrow, cultivated hands. Suddenly he looked at his own hands, holding them out and spreading the fingers apart. This gesture interested Christian immensely, though he could not account for the source of his interest. The whole man fascinated him suddenly from a point of view which he had never before assumed; and it was solely due to this curious gesture. Niels Heinrich observed this and was startled anew.
Was that all, he asked, that the gentleman had to say? His mood was menacing now. The gentleman could speak fine High German, he went on, that was sure. But if necessary, he, Niels Heinrich, could do as much. Why not? But if a man was a man of family, and especially of a family where they breed millions the way common folks breed rabbits—well, it was shabby to try to sneak off like a cheat in an inn. He wasn’t going to insist on the pearls, although he didn’t like to decide how much of a pretence and a hypocrisy this story of lending them was. No gentleman would do such things. But some compensation—he did demand that, he’d insist on it, he owed that to his own honour; and his late sister, if the truth were known, would have expected that much.
Again he regarded his hands.
Christian looked at him attentively, and replied: “You are mistaken in this too. I have no money at my disposal. My liberty of action, so far as money is concerned, is more restricted than your own, more so than that of any one who earns his bread by his own work.” He interrupted himself as he observed Niels Heinrich’s incredulously jeering smile. The spiritual vulgarity in that smile was overwhelming.
He could take no stock in those stories, Niels Heinrich answered; no, not if he was to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. If the gentleman would tell him what was behind it all, maybe he’d believe it. To do a thing like that a man must have bran in his head. If the gentleman would tell him the real facts,maybe he’d be able to see light. He’d gladly believe that there was something behind it all. Nobody could tell, of course, what sort of things the gentleman had on his conscience; so his Papa and Mama wouldn’t budge with the brass, and he told elegant stories. But one might make things pretty lively for the gentleman. There were a good many people, not only in Stolpische Street but elsewhere, who didn’t think the gentleman’s love affair with the murdered Jewess all straight and aboveboard. He, Niels Heinrich, knew a thing or two; other people knew other things, the gentleman himself knew a damned lot more than he showed, and he’d have to own up if things got serious. All one’d have to do was to give a hint to the right people, and the gentleman would find himself more clearly described in the newspapers than he had so far. His name’d be coupled with the name of that bloodhound Joachim Heinzen. Then the fat would be in the fire, or, to use the gentleman’s manner of speech, he’d be irretrievably compromised.
In Christian’s expression there did not appear the faintest trace of indignation or disgust. He sat there with lowered eyes, as though reflecting how he could answer most pertinently and objectively. Then he said: “Your hidden threats frighten me no more than your open ones. I do not care in the least where my name is mentioned or under what circumstances, whether it be spoken or written or printed. No one’s opinion or attitude has any influence on me, not even theirs who were once closest to me. So that is the third error which you have made. There is no basis in reality to anything you have said, least of all in your references to my friendship with Ruth Hofmann. No one knows anything about it, and I have spoken to no one; nor did Ruth do so, I am sure. By what right do you pass a judgment on it, and so shameful a one too? You have no suspicion how infinitely far from the truth it is. And yet it surprises me that you expect it to be effective, that you expect so false and empty anaccusation to wound or frighten me. But won’t you sit down? You’re standing there in such a hostile attitude. There’s no occasion for enmity between us; I meant to tell you that long ago. If there’s anything concerning your late sister or myself that you want to know, I shall be glad to inform you. In return, I’d like to ask you to answer me a few questions too. Do sit down.” He pointed courteously to a chair.
These words, with their calm and their courtesy, amazed Niels Heinrich to the utmost. He had been prepared for tempestuous anger, a proud and irate repulse, for the customary counter-threat that veiled attempts at blackmail are wont to receive, for consternation, possibly for fear. But he was not prepared for this courtesy. It was so fundamentally different from anything that he had met with among men, that his eyes stared in stupid astonishment for a while, as though they saw an irresponsible moron whose behaviour was half absurd and half suspicious. He grasped the chair and sat down on it—half-crouching, ready for an attack or any mischief.
“The gentleman talks like a lawyer,” he jeered. “You could make a success at the bar. What do you want to ask me anyhow? Fire away! Don’t you have no fear. And seeing as how you talk so educated, I can polish my rough snout too. I ain’t without education myself. I don’t have to take nothing from no one. I even had a spell at a gymnasium once. The widow had ambitions in her day.”
Suddenly his mockery sounded pained and forced. He bit on the iron of his chain.
“You mentioned Joachim Heinzen a moment ago,” Christian said. “You called him a bloodhound. Is that your real opinion of him? You and he were very constant companions, and you must have a fairly accurate knowledge of his character. Do you really think he was capable of having committed the murder? Please consider your answer carefully for a moment; a great deal depends on it. Why do you look at me like that?What is it?” Involuntarily Christian arose, for the look that Niels Heinrich fixed on him was literally frightful.
Niels Heinrich arose at the same moment and almost shrieked. Why ask him such fool questions? What in hell did he mean by ’em? A cardboard box lay on the table; he picked it up and hurled it down on the floor. Becoming aware of the imprudence of his outburst and regretting it, he laughed his goat-like laugh. Then stealthily, with colourless, furtive eyes he went on. Why shouldn’t Heinzen be capable of the crime? He said he’d done it and he ought to know. How did the gentleman come to stick his nose into such affairs? Maybe he was a police spy or something? He tried to steady his lightless, furtive eyes in vain. But the slack muscles of his face began to grow taut again as he continued: “I know the feller. Sure, I know him. But you never know what any one is capable of till he does it. I didn’t have no notion that he carried about a plan like that. The devil must’ve gotten into him; he must’ve swallowed poison. But I told him often enough: ‘You ain’t going to come to no good end.’” He stuck his fists in his trousers pockets, took a few steps, and leaned boastfully against the oven.
Christian approached him. “It is my impression that Heinzen lies,” he said calmly. “He lied to the judge, he lied to himself. He doesn’t realize the nature of what he says or does or accuses himself of. Don’t you share the opinion that his mind is wholly confused? Assuredly he is but the tool of some one else. Some frightful pressure must have been exerted on him, and under its weight he made statements so incriminating that he became hopelessly enmeshed. Unless a miracle happens or the real criminal is discovered, he is lost.”
Niels Heinrich’s neck seemed thin as a stalk. His Adam’s apple slid strangely up and down. His skin was white; only his ears were red as raw beef. “Would you be so kind as to tell me, my dear fellow, in what way this whole matterconcerns you?” he asked, in his brittle falsetto and with an unexpected abandonment of his gutter jargon, of which he retained only the sharp, staccato rhythm. “What conclusions are you trying to draw? What are you aiming at? And how the devil does it all concern me? Perhaps you’ll have the kindness to explain.”
“It concerns you,” Christian answered, breathing deeply, “because you associated constantly with Joachim Heinzen, and so you ought to be in a position to give me a hint. You must have some definite thoughts of your own on the matter; in one way or another it must touch you. It is my unalterable conviction that Heinzen is not and cannot be the murderer, but I am equally convinced that he has acted under the influence of the real culprit, so the latter must be among those with whom Heinzen associated. Now I cannot imagine that this individual failed to concentrate upon himself the attention of all his acquaintances, for he must be a man who is essentially different from the others. It only confirms my opinion of him that he has so far escaped the arm of justice. But he must be known; a man who was capable of that deed could not be overlooked. And that is why I turn to you. If you had not come to me, I would have gone to you.”
Niels Heinrich grinned. “Awf’ly good of you,” he said, with contorted lips. “I’d’ve been tickled to death.” Oppression and rending excitement betrayed themselves in his convulsively raised brows. He tried to control himself, and yet stammered as he continued: “Is that so? So that’s your conviction—unalterable conviction, eh? And where do you get that conviction, I’d like to ask, eh? Why shouldn’t he have killed her, seeing as how he confessed in court? Why not, eh? Nobody made him say it. This is all dam’ nonsense; you just simply dreamed this business or you was drunk. What made you think of it?”
“I shall tell you that,” said Christian, with an expression that had grown more meditative from minute to minute. “Ahuman being like this Joachim Heinzen was not capable of killing Ruth. Think what it means to kill a human being. And when that human being is Ruth! Oh, no, it’s quite out of the question. The poor fellow is actually weak-minded. Many believe him guilty for that very reason; but no weak-minded man could have killed Ruth. Even if we suppose that he obeyed his animal instincts utterly, and that in his bestial rage he lost all self-control and all human semblance, yet he could never have gone to the ultimate length, to murder. Not this lad; it is out of the question. I have looked at his hands—at his hands and at his eyes. It is out of the question.”
He paused. Niels Heinrich leaned against the oven, holding his hands carefully between his back and the tiles.
Christian continued, in a voice that was gentle and yet extraordinarily clear and penetrating: “It is out of the question, because he does not possess the necessary qualifications for the deed. I have tried to sink myself as profoundly as possible into his psychical life. I have succeeded in excluding from my consciousness all other thoughts and images, in order to arrive at a vision of his character as well as of the rôle which he played in connection with the crime. And when I have imagined him in his most bestial unrestraint, in all the rage of his lechery, I am still convinced that at the last moment he would have succumbed to Ruth. If Ruth had looked at him as he raised his arm, being what he is and as I know him, he would have weakened. He would have fallen whimpering on his knees, and rather killed himself than done her any hurt. And if she had inspired him with but one spark of thought or feeling, she would have won him over entirely. You may reply that these are mere hypotheses and suppositions; but that is not the case when one considers what Ruth was. Did you know her? Had you ever met her?”
This innocent and harmless question brought a ghastly pallor into the face of Niels Heinrich. He murmured something, and shrugged his shoulders.
“You may also make this objection: the same pressure which drove him to his confession may also have driven him to the deed itself. What will not a human being do in the darkness of mania, especially one so degraded and brutal and spiritually infirm. I consider his confessions quite valueless; it is clear that he has been influenced and commanded to make them. He contradicts himself constantly, and denies to-day what he affirmed yesterday. He sticks only to the one point of his guilt. But in this stubborn self-accusation there is more than mere persistence; there is despair and utter horror. And these are not manifested as they would be by a guilty soul in the torments of conscience, but as they would be manifested by a child who has spent a long night in a dark room, where monstrous and ghastly horrors shook the very foundations of its soul. His conscience should have been eased by confession, but the contrary is true. How is that to be explained?
“Furthermore, he is supposed to have lured Ruth to a hidden place. Certainly it must have been obscure and hidden, for the deed was not done in woods or lonely fields. But in spite of the most rigid search, no such spot has been discovered, and at no hearing has it been possible to persuade Heinzen to point it out. He is being questioned on this point continually, but he is resolutely silent or answers nonsense. Two explanations have been proposed. One is that he desires to save an accomplice who might be tracked from the scene of the crime. The other is that he suffers from one of those disturbances or even complete interruptions of the memory, such as are familiar to psychiatrists in their study of abnormal types. I accept neither the one explanation nor the other. It is my opinion that he doesn’t know the place. He was not perhaps even present when the murder was committed. It is possible that he was drugged or drunk, and awakened from his stupor only to see the body. And it is possible that the sight of the body produced in him a fearful self-deception, orthat he was tricked and driven into believing himself the murderer....”
Niels Heinrich advanced a single step. His jaw shook. He felt as though a rain of burning stones were falling on him. A dark astonishment and horror were revealed in his face. He wanted to be silent, to jeer, to go; he wanted to seem cold and unconscious of any knowledge or understanding. For danger was upon him, the ultimate danger of vengeance, of the sword, the rope, the axe. He saw them all. Yet he was not capable of self-control; something within was stronger than he. “Man alive....” The words came clucking from his throat on fire. “Man alive....” Then came a wild terror of increasing the danger by his behaviour. He couldn’t stand that; it was too much for his nerves. What had that man to do with it? And again he fell silent before Christian’s slightly blinking glance, and became tense with staring and waiting. He’d have to watch this man now; the business was getting bad; it was necessary now to guard his life. God, what wouldn’t that accursed mouth utter?
Christian walked to the window and returned. He walked around the table and returned. He had become aware of the stirring in Niels Heinrich; and he had the impression of having witnessed the bursting of some taut vessel and felt the flick of flying slime. But this impression was not tangible at once. Only he had the curious feeling of having received a confirmation of thoughts and visions of which he was himself still faintly doubtful; and these he wanted to develop and fortify. He said: “To lure Ruth to the spot where she was killed needed a certain cunning. Careful preparations were necessary, and guarded plans; and these were skilfully made, as their success illustrates. But all witnesses who know Heinzen agree that he is incapable of such activities. He is described as so stupid that he cannot remember names or numbers; and then it is assumed that he could have committed the murder with the brutal, merciless violence of a degraded debauchee.The experts in criminology assert that precisely this mixture of the cunning and the brutal is characteristic of such types and such crimes. That may be true; but it proves nothing in this case, which was not so simple. Ruth went another path from that to Joachim Heinzen.”
“Another, eh? What one, eh? Well, well,” Niels Heinrich croaked. “Ain’t it enough to give you a belly-ache? Ain’t it enough to——” He took his hat, which he had hung up at the beginning of the conversation, put it on at a dashing angle, and prepared to go. But Christian knew that Niels Heinrich would not go, and followed him with a passionately inquiring glance. He was terribly moved.
Niels Heinrich got as far as the door. There he turned around, and with a peering, repressed look drew from his pocket, with apparent indifference, a little revolver. He held it in one hand. With the other hand he played, still indifferently and as though to amuse himself, with the trigger and the barrel.
Christian paid no attention to this perfidious gesture. He scarcely saw it. He stood in the middle of the room, and, in the irresistible excitement which had mastered him, pressed his right hand over his eyes. He said: “Perhaps I only dreamed that she determined of her own free will to die. Oh, it was murder, none the less. But she consented to it. And those last hours of hers! They must have been unheard of—verging on the ultimate which no feeling can reach. Step by step! And then at last she begged for the end. Perhaps I have only dreamed it, but it seems to me as though I had seen....”
He stopped, for a sharp, whip-like report resounded. A shot had been fired. One of the chairs beside the table trembled; the bullet was buried in its leg. But it had also grazed the back of Niels Heinrich’s hand, and from the wound, which was like a cut, the blood trickled. He cursed and shook himself.
“You’ve hurt yourself,” Christian said, sympathetically, and went up to him. Yet both were listening—like accomplices. The entrance of another seemed equally undesirable to both. Although the detonation had been moderate, it had been heard in the adjoining flats. One heard doors opening and questioning, scolding, frightened voices. After a few minutes the silence fell again. The people in the house were used to sudden alarms, and quickly quieted down.
Niels Heinrich wrapped his rather soiled handkerchief about his wounded hand. But Christian hurried into the next room, and returned with a jug of water and a clean cloth. He washed the wound and bandaged it expertly. He did so with a tenderness and care that made Niels Heinrich regard him with tensely wrinkled forehead and sombre shyness. He had never seen any one, no man at least, act thus. He was passive. He was contemptuous, yet could not hold his contempt. He could not but let Christian finish.
“It might have had dangerous consequences,” Christian murmured.
Niels Heinrich did not answer, and so there ensued a long and rather strange silence.
Niels Heinrich became aware of the terrible meaning of this silence, and words came from him raspingly: “Well, what’s wanted?”
Christian leaned with both hands upon the back of the chair, and looked at Niels Heinrich. He was pale, and struggled for expression. “It would be important to determine where Michael was hidden in the time during which he was gone,” he began. He spoke differently now—more gropingly and searchingly, quiveringly and uncertainly, as though, during his very speaking, he were constantly addressing questions to himself. “It would be extremely important. Michael is Ruth’s brother. Perhaps you have heard that for six days he could not be found anywhere. Whenever the commissary of police or the investigating judge try to question him, he has anattack of hysterics. So they have determined to let him be for a while, merely keeping a strict watch over him; but he will not move from the room, and utters no sound. The medical experts shake their heads and are at a loss. And everything depends on his being persuaded to speak at last. Surely it would throw some light on the mystery. But much would be gained if only we discovered where he was hidden.”
Niels Heinrich stared in dark consternation. This man grew more and more terrible. The thought of flight quivered in his eyes. “How d’you expect me to know?” he grunted. “What the bloody hell do I care? How should I know? I told you before—what the——” He lapsed back into his Berlinese jargon, as though it were a refuge.
“I merely thought that rumours might have come your way, that perhaps people who live near the Heinzens noticed or heard something. Do you recall any such thing?”
The question was so earnest, so full of monition and almost of beseeching, that Niels Heinrich, instead of yielding to an impulse of anger, listened, listened to that voice, and had the appearance of one who was bound in fetters. And gradually he really recalled a rumour of that kind which had come to him. There was among his acquaintances a woman of the streets called Molly Gutkind. On account of her plump body and white skin she was known as the Little Maggot. She was quite young, barely seventeen. A few days ago he had been told that the Little Maggot had given shelter to a boy for quite a while, that she had carefully hidden him from everyone, and that, since then, a complete change had come over her. Before that, she had been cheerful and careless; now she was melancholy, and haunted the streets no more.
He had been told this as he was told all the news of the lower world, but he had paid no attention to the anecdote, and it had slipped from his memory. Now it emerged in his mind and fitted the case in question. An instinct told him that it fitted; but that very perception increased his feelingof defencelessness before this man who seemed now to be gazing into him and tearing from him things silent and hidden and even forgotten. He must follow up the rumour, and very secretively get to the bottom of it and test it. In order to say something and tear himself away at last, he murmured that he’d see what could be done, but the gentleman mustn’t count on him, because spying was not his kind of business. He dragged himself shiftily to the door with a wavering, withered expression. He rubbed his moist fingers together and lit a cigarette, shivered in the coolness that met him from the outer hall, and turned up the collar of his yellow overcoat.
Christian courteously accompanied him to the door, and said softly: “I hope to see you soon. I shall expect you.”
On the landing of the second storey Niels Heinrich stopped and laughed his goat-like laugh senselessly into the void.
Prince Wiguniewski wrote to Cornelius Ermelang at Vaucluse in the South of France:
“In your Petrarchan solitude you seem to have lost all touch with the world, since you inquire so insistently after our diva. I thought you were still in Paris and that you had seen Eva Sorel. For she returned from there only a few weeks ago—returned like a general after a victorious campaign of three weeks, full of fame and booty. Didn’t you learn from the newspapers at least of the feverish enthusiasm which she has recently created in international society?
“In your inquiry there is an undertone of anxiety. I understand the reason for it, even though you are reserved on that point. Brief as your visit to her during your stay in Petrograd may have been, your eyes, which are so practised in reading the souls of men, must have perceived the change that has come over her. I hesitate to call that change one that should cause us anxiety, for doubtless it conformssomehow to the law of her being. Yet to behold it means pain to us who witnessed her beginnings and her rise—to those ten or twelve people in Europe, the fairest experience of whose youth was her sweetness and radiance and starry freedom from earth’s heaviness. She was timeless; she was at each moment that very moment’s gift. I need not describe to you what she was; you knew her. But is it for us to quarrel or mourn because a given development does not correspond to our expectations? However we may strive and cry, that which has become and now is unquestionably holds the wiser and the deeper sense of life. We always want too much, and so end by seeing and understanding too little. We need more humility.
“It is a fact that she employs and stirs public opinion in our country as scarcely any other human being does. Every one knows at all times who is in her favour and who has fallen from grace. The luxury that surrounds her generates the wildest fables, and does, indeed, surpass anything ever known. Her monthly income runs into the hundreds of thousands, and her fortune is estimated at between twenty and thirty millions of rubles. Twice a week she receives a carload of flowers from the Riviera, and twice from the Crimea.
“Concerning the castle which she is building at Yalta on the sea, details are told that remind one of the Arabian Nights. It is to be finished in a month, and magnificent festivities are planned for the house-warming. I am among the guests invited. Every one is talking about this castle. The park is said to cover an area of five square miles. Only by a most extravagant expenditure of money and labour could the whole thing have been completed within a year. I am told that the central building has a tower from which one has a magnificent view of the sea, and that this tower is a copy of the tower of the Signoria at Florence. A gilded spiral staircase with a balustrade of costly enamel leads upward within, and each window affords a carefully selected view of the southern landscape.To adorn the walls of one of her great rooms she desired the remaining paintings which the British had still left in El Hira, the celebrated ruin in the Arabian desert. To obtain them, extensive commercial and diplomatic negotiations were necessary. Further large sums were spent and difficulties surmounted to fit out an expedition which was in the desert for three months and has but just returned. Its task was as dangerous as it was romantic, and seven of its members lost their lives. When Eva was told of this, she seemed to be frightened and to regret the boldness of her desires. But then she saw the pictures, and was so entranced that her smile seemed almost to express a satisfaction at the sacrifices they had cost.
“There is no exaggeration in this account. Such is her nature now. Those inconceivably beautiful hands treat the world as though it were possessed by slaves and meant and destined for her alone. I myself beheld her one day crouching before the paintings of a strange, far age, and I was shaken by the expression with which she regarded the gestures of those archaic figures. It was an expression of estrangedness and cruelty.
“It is quite by chance that I drifted to the subject of the ancient paintings and how they were procured. But I see now that I could have chosen no shorter path to the kernel of what I should like to tell you. The events of the past few days actually start from that incident. Few men, of course, can raise the veil that hides these events to-day and will probably always hide them. Any one who has not, like myself, gained some insight through a series of lucky accidents, is simply groping in the dark. I must beg you, too, to observe the strictest secrecy. This letter, which is being sent with especial precautions and which a courier of the embassy is taking across the frontier, may serve as a document entrusted to your care. By its help a later age will be able to track the genesis of certain happenings to their most distant roots.
“Scarcely had the paintings of El Hira arrived, than reclamations on the ground of violated property rights were made by France. The arrangements with England were asserted to have omitted all consideration of the legal rights of a Parisian stock-company, and the French government overwhelmed our ministry with notes and protests. The leader of the expedition, a courageous and witty scholar named Andrei Gabrilovitch Yaminsky, was accused of open robbery. The whole matter was unpleasant and the consternation great, and the noise intimidated even the old foxes of diplomacy. They feared that they had committed a bad blunder, and thus promenaded into the trap set for them. Since this affair, amusingly enough, actually threatened to darken the political sky, the important thing, above all, was to keep it from the knowledge of the Grand Duke Cyril, who holds the threads of foreign affairs in his hands like a spider in the midst of its web, and who feels the gentlest vibration. All efforts were directed to this end. Terror of the Grand Duke’s rage created the most grotesque situations in the responsible ministerial offices.
“The minister in person went to Eva Sorel. She declared proudly that she would assume full responsibility and guard everyone concerned from unpleasant consequences. But there were grave doubts as to that. Similar cases were recalled, in which later on a malicious punishment had, after all, been the portion of the subordinates. So Eva was earnestly begged to give up the mural paintings. She resisted steadily, asserted her right to them, and grew defiant. When the officials were foolish enough to have Andrei Yaminsky, to whom she had taken a great liking, arrested, she threatened to inform the Grand Duke, who happened to be staying at Tsarskoye Selo. Thus terror rose to its utmost height. And now the original instigators of the whole intrigue held their fit time to have come. Suddenly there was calm and the storm had passed. But what had been the hidden and ultimate occasion of it all?
“The initiated whispered of an unholy bargain; but their knowledge, it seems to me, reaches no farther than mine. I sit near enough to the loom to see the shuttles flying to and fro. But I can assert that it is weaving an evil web. In what age have not the arts of a courtesan served to drag nations into slaughter? Perhaps you think the twentieth century too advanced for cabals in the style of Mazarin? I am not so sure of it. And perhaps you also think that the great catastrophes and revolutions use the wills and the actions of trivial mortals only in appearance, and that both accusation and guilt lose their validity when we become aware of the impersonal march of fate? But we do not grasp that march. We are human and we must judge, even as we must suffer, just because we must suffer.
“The unholy bargain involved in this instance concerns the building of fortresses on our Polish and Volhynian frontiers. For unknown reasons the Grand Duke opposed this plan until now. But during the past few days there has been talk of a new government loan. Well, there is one human being and only one capable of having inclined his rigid will toward this project. Why say more? One shudders at the thought of a connection between mural paintings five thousand years old and the springs of modern diplomatic trickery; between the bought complaisance of that incomparable body, that true adornment of the world, and the erection of fortress walls and casemates. The comedy rends one’s heart.
“But that is not all my story. Connected with these events is the death of Andrei Gabrilovitch Yaminsky. I have indicated the fact that Eva was markedly attracted toward him. The courage and energy he had shown in that expedition to the desert, his mind, and not least of all his physical advantages dazzled her. She distinguished him in every way. Since she admits the existence of no barriers and gives her impulses complete expression in action, she did not hesitate in this instance, and Yaminsky was granted a happiness of which he had notdared to dream, and which seems to have robbed him of all moral equilibrium. It filled him to overflowing; it crazed him. Among his friends one evening, over the wine, of course, he began to chatter and boasted of his conquest. He realized his frightful error too late. What would have been contemptible weakness in any instance was sheer crime here. Too late he besought his witnesses to forget his words, to be silent, to consider him a liar and a boaster. Nor did it help him to seek them out singly and persuade them to secrecy. The rumour was started. A discreet and suspected affair would not have caused more than silent or whispered curiosity. The thing openly acknowledged became a topic of general talk. Punishment did not delay long, and Fyodor Szilaghin was the executioner.
“It is not easy to define the rôle which Szilaghin plays in Eva’s present life. Now he seems to be her warder, now her seducer. No one knows whether he desires to please and win her, or whether he is but the servant and Argus of his sombre lord and friend. I believe that Eva herself is in the dark on this point. His enigmatic character, his masterly subtlety and impenetrable faithlessness seemed to me like the visible symbols of the darkening and disquietude of Eva’s soul. There is no doubt that he acted with her knowledge and consent when he undertook to punish Yaminsky. But I dare not decide whether they ever actually spoke of the matter, whether it was done at his or her demand, whether her disappointment made her yield to him or her anger made her revengeful for herself, whether he acted in defence of her honour or that of his master. At all events, the punishment was accomplished.
“The deed itself is hidden in mystery and twilight, and is described with rather repulsive details. Last Wednesday evening Yaminsky was dining with friends in a side room at Cubat’s on the great Morskaia. Shortly before midnight the door was torn open, and four young men, muffled in furs to their eyes, made their way in. Three of them surroundedYaminsky, and one turned out the lights. Immediately a shot resounded, and before Yaminsky’s friends had recovered from their amazement, the strangers were gone. Yaminsky lay on the floor, soaking in his blood. Szilaghin was definitely recognized as one of the four.
“The boldest stroke came later. In the tumult that arose among the guests of the restaurant, the body of the murdered man had been forgotten. People called for the police and ran and shoved and asked questions. In the meantime a cab stopped at the door. Two men made their way through the crowd to where the dead man lay, and carried him past the staring bystanders into the cab. No one prevented them. The cab raced down the Nevski to the Palace Bridge and stopped. The two dragged the body to the shore, and flung it down among the ice floes of the wintry Neva.
“That same evening I was at Eva’s, together with Caille, Lord Elmster, and some Russian artists. She was entrancing, and of a sparkling gaiety that made one feel loth to lose a breath of it. I no longer remember how the conversation happened to turn to sidereal phenomena and solar systems. For a while in the usual light way, the question was considered whether other planets might not be inhabited by men or man-like beings. And Eva said: ‘I have read, and wise men have told me, that Saturn has ten moons and also a ring of glowing fire that surrounds the great star with purple and violet flame. The planet itself, I am told, is still composed of red-hot lava. But on the ten moons there might be life and creatures like ourselves. Imagine the night in those regions—the dark glow of the great mother star, the purple rainbow forever spanning the whole firmament, and the ten moons circling beside and above one another, so near perhaps that those beings can speak and communicate from world to world. What possibilities! What visions of happiness and beauty!’ Such, or nearly such were her words. One of us replied that it was quite as easy to conceive of moon at war with moon, even as here land warswith land, despite the glory of the heavens, and that experience made us fear that nowhere in the universe would the wonders of a sky save restless creatures like ourselves from robbery and violence. But she said: ‘Do not destroy my faith; leave me my Saturnian Paradise.’
“And she knew, she could not but have known, that in that very hour Yaminsky, whom she had loved, was dying an ugly and a murderous death.
“It is difficult to have humility.”
Christian shared his meals with Michael, and cared for him in brotherly fashion. At night he spread a couch for him with his own hands. He knew how to accustom the boy to his presence; his gift of unobtrusiveness stood him in good stead. In his presence Michael lost the convulsive rigour which not even Johanna’s affectionate considerateness had been able to break. At times he would follow Christian with his eyes. “Why do you look at me?” Christian asked. The boy was silent.
“I should like to know what you are thinking,” Christian said.
The boy was silent. Again and again he followed Christian with his eyes, and seemed torn between two feelings.
On a certain evening he spoke for the first time. “What will happen to me?” he whispered, in a scarcely audible voice.
“You should have a little confidence in me,” Christian said, winningly.
Michael stared in front of him. “I am afraid,” he said at last.
“What are you afraid of?”
“Of everything. Of everything in the world. Of people and animals and darkness and light and of myself.”
“Have you felt that way long?”
“You think it is only since.... No. It has always been so. The fear is in my body like my lungs or my brain. When I was a child I lay abed at night trembling with fear. I was afraid if I heard a noise. I was afraid of the house and the wall and the window. I was afraid of a dream which I had not yet dreamed. I thought: ‘Now I shall hear a scream,’ or: ‘Now there will be a fire.’ If father was out in the country I thought: ‘He will never come back; there are many who never come back; why should he?’ If he was at home I thought: ‘He has had a dreadful experience, but no one must know it.’ But it was worse when Ruth was away. I never hated any one as I hated Ruth in those days, and it was only because she was away so much. It was my fear.”
“And you went about with that fear in your heart and spoke of it to no one?”
“To whom could I have spoken? It all seemed so stupid. I would have been laughed at.”
“But as you grew older the fear must have left?”
“On the contrary.” Michael shook his head and looked undecided. He seemed to waver. Should he say more? “On the contrary,” he repeated. “Such fear grows up with one. Thoughts have no power over it. If once you have it, all that you dread comes true. One should know less; to know less is to suffer less fear.”
“I don’t understand that,” said Christian, although the boy’s words moved him. “The fear of childhood—that I understand. But it passes with childhood.”
Again Michael shook his head.
“Explain it to me,” Christian continued. “You probably see danger everywhere, and fear illnesses and misfortunes and meetings with people.”
“No,” Michael answered swiftly, and wrinkled his forehead. “It’s not so simple. That happens too, but it can’t harm onemuch. It isn’t reality. Reality is like a deep well; a deep, black, bottomless hole. Reality is.... Wait a moment: Suppose I take up the chessboard. Suddenly it’s not a chessboard at all. It’s something strange. I know what it is, but I can’t remember. Its name gives me no clue to what it is. But the name causes me to be satisfied for a while. Do you understand?”
“Not at all. It’s quite incomprehensible.”
“Well, yes,” Michael said, morosely. “I suppose it is foolishness.”
“Couldn’t you take some other example?”
“Another? Wait a moment. It’s so hard for me to find the right expressions. Wait.... A couple of weeks ago father had gone to Fürstenwalde. He went one evening, and he was to be back the next morning. I was alone at home. Ruth was with friends, in Schmargendorf, I think. She had told me she would be home late, and as it grew later I grew more and more restless. Not because I feared that something might have happened to Ruth; I didn’t even think of that. It was the empty room and the evening and the flight of time. Time runs on so, with such terrible swiftness and with such terrible relentlessness. It runs like water in which one must drown. If Ruth had come, there would have been a barrier to that awful flowing; time would have had to start anew. But Ruth did not come. There was a clock on the wall of that room. You must have seen it often—a round clock with a blue dial and a pendulum of brass. It ticked and ticked, and its ticking was like hammer blows. At last I went and held the pendulum, and the ticking stopped. Then the fear stopped too, and I could go to sleep. Time was no more, and my fear was no more.”
“It is very strange,” Christian murmured.
“Years ago, when we were taught to be religious, it was better. One could pray. Of course, the prayers too were pure fear, but they eased one.”
“I am surprised,” said Christian, “that you never confided in your sister.”
Michael gave a start. Then he answered very shyly, and so softly that Christian had to move his chair nearer to hear at all. “My sister ... no, that was impossible. Ruth had so much to bear as it was; but it would have been impossible anyhow. Among Jews, brothers and sisters are not as close as among Christians; I mean Jews who don’t live among Christians. We’re from the country, you know, and so we were farther removed from other people than here. A brother can’t confide in his sister. From the very beginning the sister is a woman; you feel that, even when she’s a little girl. And the whole misery comes from just that....”
“How is that? What particular misery?” Christian asked, in a whisper.
“It is frightfully hard to tell,” Michael continued, dreamily. “I don’t believe I can express it; it might sound so ugly. But it goes on and on, and one detail arises from another. Brother and sister—it sound so innocent. But each of the two has a body and a soul. The soul is clean, but the body is unclean. Sister—she is sacred. But it’s a woman, too, that one sees. Day and night it steals into your brooding—woman ... woman. And woman is terror, because woman is the body, and the body is fear. Without the body one could understand the world; without woman one could understand God. And until one understands God, the fear is upon one. Always the nearness of that other body that you are forced to think about. Where we lived last we all had to sleep in one room. Every evening I hid my head under the covering and held my thoughts in check. Don’t misunderstand me, please! It wasn’t anything ugly; my thoughts weren’t ugly thoughts. But there was that terrible, nameless fear.... Oh, how can I explain it? The fear of.... No, I can’t put it into words. There was Ruth, so tender and delicate. Everything about her was in direct contradictionto the idea of woman; and yet I trembled with aversion because she was one. Man as he is made and as he shows himself—ah, those are two different things. I must tell you about a dream I had—not once, but twenty times, always alike. I dreamed that a fire had broken out, and that Ruth and I had to flee quite naked down the stairs and out of the house. Ruth had to drag me along by force, or I would have rushed back right into the fire, so terrible was my shame. And I thought: ‘Ruth, that isn’t you, that mustn’t be you.’ I didn’t, in that dream, ever see her, but I knew and felt that she was naked. And she—she acted quite naturally and even smiled. ‘Dear God,’ I thought, ‘how can she smile?’ And then by day I didn’t dare look at her, and every kind glance of hers reminded me of my sin. But why do I tell you all that—why? It makes me feel so defiled, so unspeakably defiled.”
“No, Michael, go on,” Christian said, gently and calmly. “Don’t be afraid. Tell me everything. I shall understand, or, at all events, I shall do my best to understand.”
Michael looked searchingly up at Christian. His precocious features were furrowed with spiritual pain. “I sought a woman whom I might approach,” he began, after a pause. “It seemed to me that I had soiled Ruth in my mind, and that I must cleanse that soilure. I was guilty before her, and must be liberated from that guilt.”
“It was a fatal delusion in which you were caught,” Christian said. “You weren’t guilty. You had painfully constructed that guilt.” He waited, but Michael said nothing. “Guilty,” Christian repeated, as though he were weighing the word in his hand. “Guilty....” His face expressed absolute doubt.
“Guilty or not,” the boy persisted, “it was as I have told you. If I feel a sense of guilt, who can redeem me from it? One can only do that oneself.”
“Believe me,” said Christian, “it is a delusion.”
“But they were all Ruth,” Michael continued, and his voice was full of dread. “They were all Ruth—the most depraved and degraded. I had so much reverence for them, and at the same time I felt a great disgust. The unclean thing always grew more powerful in my thoughts. While I sought and sought, my life became one pain. I cursed my blood. Whatever I touched became slimy and unclean.”
“You should have confessed to Ruth, just to her, she was the best refuge you had,” said Christian.
“I couldn’t,” Michael assured him. “I couldn’t. Rather I should have done, I don’t know what.... I couldn’t.”
For a while he lost himself in brooding. Then he spoke quickly and hastily. “On the Saturday before the Sunday on which Ruth was at home for the last time, father sent me to the coal-dealer to pay the bill in person. There was no one in the shop, so I went into the room behind the shop, and there lay the coal-dealer with a woman in his arms. They did not notice me, and I fled; I don’t remember how I got out, but until evening I ran about senselessly in the streets. The terror had never been so great. Next afternoon—it was that very Sunday—between four and five I was walking on Lichener Street. Suddenly, a rainstorm came up, and a girl took me under her umbrella. It was Molly Gutkind. I saw at once the sort of girl she was. She asked me to come home with her. I didn’t answer, but she kept on walking beside me. She said if I didn’t want to come now, she’d wait for me that evening, that she lived on Prenzlauer Alley, opposite the gas-tank near the freight station, over a public house called ‘Adele’s Rest.’ She took my hand and coaxed me: ‘You come, little boy, you look so sad. I like your dark eyes; you’re an innocent little creature.’ When I reached home I saw what Ruth had written on the slate. Prenzlauer Alley—how strange that was! It might so easily have been some other neighbourhood. It was very strange. I felt desolate, and sat down on the stairs. Then I went up to the room and read father’sletter, and it seemed to me as though I had known everything beforehand. I felt so lonely that I went down again, and walked and walked until I stood in front of that house in Prenzlauer Alley.”
“And so, of course, you went up to the girl’s room?” Christian asked, with a strangely cheerful expression that hid his suspense.
Michael nodded. He said he had hesitated a long time. In the public-house he had heard the playing of a harmonica. It was an exceedingly dirty house standing back from the street, an old house with splotches of moisture on the wall and a wooden fence, and a pile of bricks and refuse in front of it. At the door a dog had stood. “I didn’t dare go past that dog,” said Michael, and mechanically folded his hands. “He was so big and stared at me so treacherously. But Molly Gutkind had seen me from the window (the house has only two storeys); she beckoned to me, and the dog trotted out into the street. I went into the house, and there was Molly on the stairs. She laughed and drew me into her room. She served me with food, ham sandwiches and pastry. To-day, she said, she’d be my hostess; next time I’d have to be her host. She said she knew I was a Jew and she was glad; she always liked Jews. If I’d be just a little bit nice to her, I’d never regret it. It was all so peculiar. What was I to her? What could I be to her? I said I’d go now, but she wouldn’t let me, and said I must stay with her. And then...!”
“My dear boy,” Christian said, softly.
The tender words made the boy shudder all the more. He was silent for many minutes. When he spoke again his voice sounded changed. He said dully: “Three times I begged her to blow out the lamp, and at last she did so. But something happened to the girl that I hadn’t expected. She said she wouldn’t sin against me; she saw that she was a bad girl, and I must forgive her. As she said this she wept, and she addedthat she longed for her home with all her heart, and had a horror of her present life. I seemed to be stricken dumb, but I was sorry for her with all my heart. My body trembled and my teeth chattered, and I let her speak and lament. When I saw that she had fallen asleep, I thought about myself as deeply and severely as I could. It was dark and silent; I heard nothing but the breathing of the girl. No guests were left in the public-house below. It was uncannily silent; and with every moment’s silence my old fear grew within me. Every moment it seemed to me that that terrible silence must be broken. I watched the very seconds pass. And suddenly I heard a cry. A sudden cry. How shall I describe it? It came from deep, deep below, from under the earth, from behind walls. It was not very loud or shrill, but it was a cry to make the heart stop beating. It was like a ray, do you understand, a hot, thin, piercing ray. I can compare it to nothing else. I thought—Ruth! My single thought was—Ruth! Do you understand that? It was as though some one had plunged an icy blade into my back. O God, it was terrible!”
“And what did you do?” asked Christian, white as the wall.
And Michael stammered that he had lain there and lain there, and listened and listened.
“Is it possible that you didn’t jump up and rush out? That you didn’t——? Is it possible?”
How could he have believed, Michael said, that it was really Ruth? The thought had shot into his brain only like a little, flickering flame of terror. He stared wide-eyed into nothingness, and suddenly sobbed. “And now listen,” he said, and reached for Christian’s hand, “listen!”
And this is what he told. His face was veiled, tear-stained, pale as death. He hadn’t been able to forget that cry. He didn’t know how much time had passed, when finally he arose from the girl’s side. He had left the room on tiptoe. The darkness had been solid; outside he had seen and heardnothing. He had stood on the stairs for perhaps fifteen minutes. Then he had heard steps, steps and gasps as of some one carrying a heavy burden. He hadn’t moved. Then he had seen a light, the beam of a bull’s-eye lantern; and he had seen a man, not his face, only his back. This man had carried a large bale on his back and a bundle in his hand. The man’s feet had been bare, and the feet had been red—with blood. He had gone in front of the house and set down the bale; then he had gone back into the cellar and come back with another man. He had shoved this man in front of him as one shoves a keg. One could tell that from the sound, but nothing could be seen, because the lantern had now been darkened. The second man had uttered sounds as though he had a gag in his mouth. Then they had gone away, after closing the door of the house, and all had been silent again. “I had been at the head of the stairs the whole time,” Michael said, and took a deep breath.
Christian said nothing. He seemed turned to stone.
“It was very quiet and I went down,” Michael continued his account. “Something drew me on. I groped my way to the cellar stairs step by step. There I stood a long time. Dawn was rising; I could see it from the narrow window above the door. I stood at the head of the cellar stairs. Steps of stone lead downwards. I saw first one, then two, then three, then four. The lighter it grew, the more steps I saw, but the light could not get beyond the sixth step.”
It was harder and harder for him to speak. Sweat stood on his forehead. He leaned back and seemed about to fall over. Christian supported him. He got up and bent over the boy. In his attitude and gesture there was something wonderfully winning. Everything depended now on discovering the last, most fearful truth. His whole being concentrated itself in his will, and the boy yielded to this silent power. What he confessed now sounded at first confused and dim as the story of ghostly visions or the dreams of fever. One couldhardly tell from the words what was reality and what the compulsive imaginings of fear. One grisly fact stood out—the finding of the blood-soaked handkerchief. Thrice Christian asked whether he had found it on the stairs or in the cellar. Each time the boy’s answer was different. He quivered like a rope in the wind when Christian begged him to be exact and to think carefully. He said he didn’t remember. Yes, he did, too; it had, been down below. He described a partition, wooden railings, and a small, barred cellar window, through which the yellowish pale light of morning had now come in. But he hadn’t really been master of his senses, and couldn’t remember whether he had really entered the room. And at that he gave a loud sob.
Christian stood beside him, laying both hands on the boy’s shoulders. The boy quivered as though an electric current were passing through him. “I beseech you,” said Christian, “Michael, I beseech you!” and he felt his own strength ebbing. Then Michael whispered that he had recognized Ruth’s initials on the handkerchief at once. But from that moment his brain seemed to have been hacked to pieces, and he begged Christian to plague him no more. He wouldn’t go on; he’d rather drop down dead. But Christian grasped the boy’s wrists. And Michael whispered: the house had betrayed the fact to him that something nameless had happened to Ruth, and the air had roared it to him. The walls seemed to have piled themselves on him and he had had a vision of everything, everything, and had whined and moaned and lacerated his neck with his own nails. “Here and here and here,” he sobbed and pointed to his neck, which was indeed covered with the scars of recent scratches. Then he had run to the door of the house and rattled the knob, and then back again and had counted the cellar steps, just out of sheer despair. Then he had run up the stairs, and suddenly, at a door, he had seen a man; in the twilight he had seen a fat man with a white apron and a white cap, suchas are worn by bakers, and a kerchief around his neck with stiff, white, protruding ends. The man had stood on the threshold, white and fat and sleepy. He might have been a shadow or an apparition. But he had said in a low, sleepy, surly voice: “Now they’ve gone and killed her, lad.” After that he had vanished, simply vanished; and he, Michael, had rushed breathlessly into Molly Gutkind’s room. She had waked up, and he had lain down on the bed and besought her with all the passion of his stricken soul to be silent and to keep him hidden, even if he were to fall ill, to tell no one but to keep him there and be silent. Why he had asked that, why it had seemed so necessary to him that the girl should say nothing—even now he didn’t understand that. But he felt just the same this minute, and he would be utterly devoted to Christian all his life if he, too, would never betray what he had just confessed to him.
“Will you? Will you?” he asked, solemnly, and with a dark glow in his tormented eyes.
“I shall keep silent,” Christian replied.
“Then perhaps I can go on living,” the boy said.
Christian looked at him, and their eyes met in a strange harmony and understanding.
“And how long did you stay with the girl after that?” Christian asked.
“I don’t know. But one morning she said she couldn’t keep me any longer and I’d have to go. All the previous time my consciousness hadn’t been clear. I must have talked as in delirium. The girl did all she could for me; my condition went to her heart. She sat at the bedside for hours and held my hands. After I left her I wandered about in the suburbs and in the woods, I don’t know where. At last I came here. I don’t know why I came to you, except that it seemed as though Ruth were sending me to you. You seemed to be the only human being that existed for me in all the world. But what am I to do now? What is going to happen?”
Christian reflected for several seconds before he answered with a strange smile: “We must wait for him.”
“For him? For whom?”
“For him.”
And again their eyes met.
It was late at night, but they did not think of sleeping.