In addition to the room which his mother gave him, Niels Heinrich had another lodging at a tinsmith’s in Rheinsberger Street on the fourth floor. On the day after his conversation with Christian he moved away from there. He did it because too many people knew that he lodged here. Also he couldn’t sleep there any more. He slept half an hour, at most; then he lay awake smoking cigarettes, tossing from side to side. From time to time he laughed a dry, rattling laugh, whenever the recollection of something which that man Wahnschaffe had said became particularly vivid.
Who was that man, anyhow? You could think till your brain cracked. That man!
Curiosity was like a conflagration in Niels Heinrich.
He took a room in Demminer Street with a grocer named Kahle. The room was immediately over the shop. The big sign saying “Eggs, Butter, Cheese” almost covered the low window; consequently there was little light in that hole. In addition the flooring and the walls were so thin that one could hear the ringing of the shop bell, the talk of the customers, and all other sounds. There he lay again and smoked cigarettes and thought of that man.
That man and he—there was no place in the world for them both. That was the upshot of his reflections.
Kahle demanded his rent money in advance. Niels Heinrich said that that demand offended his honour; he always paid on the last of the month. Kahle answered that that might beso, but that it was his custom to get rent in advance. Kahle’s wife—lean as a nail and with tall hair-dressing—screamed and became vulgar at once. Niels Heinrich contented himself with a few dry insults and promised to pay on the third.
He tried to work in a factory. But hammer and drill seemed to offer a conscious resistance to him; the wheels and flying belts seemed to whirl through his body, and the regular working-hours to smother him. After the noon-rest it was found that one of the machines was out of order. A screw was loose, and only the vigilance of the machinist had prevented a disaster. He declared to both the foreman and the engineer that the trouble was due to the deliberate act of a rogue; but investigation proved fruitless.
He had been ruined, so far as work was concerned, Niels Heinrich said to himself; and since he needed money he went to the widow. She said that all her available money consisted of sixteen marks. She offered him six. It wasn’t enough. “Boy, you look a sight!” she cried, frightened. He told her roughly not to put on airs, and added that she certainly couldn’t expect him to be satisfied with a few dirty pennies. She whined and explained that business was wretchedly slack; it hardly paid to tell people’s fortunes any more. She seemed to have nothing but ill-luck and to have lost her skill. Niels Heinrich answered darkly that he’d go to the colonies; he’d sail next week, and then she’d be rid of him. The widow was moved, and produced three small gold coins.
One he gave to Kahle.
Then he went to Griebenow’s gin shop, next to a dancing hall, finally to a notorious dive in a cellar.
He was a changed man—everybody said that, and he stared at them in an evil way. Nothing had any savour to him. Everything was disjointed; the world seemed to be coming apart. His fingers itched to jerk the lamps from their hooks. If he saw two people whispering together, it made him feel like raving; he wanted to pick up a chair, and bring it crashingdown on their skulls. A woman made advances to him; he caught her so roughly by the neck that she screamed with terror. Her sweetheart called him to account, and drew his knife; the eyes of both blazed with hatred. The keeper of the dive, and several others in whose interest it was to have the peace kept, effected a partial reconciliation. The fellow’s mien was still menacing, but Niels Heinrich laughed his goat-like laugh. What could that fellow do to him? What could any of them do to him? Swine! All men, all—swine! What did they matter?
But there were four little words that he couldn’t get away from. “I shall expect you.” And these words sounded into the jabbering and slavering of the curs about him. “I shall expect you.” And how that man had stood up in front of him! Niels Heinrich drew in his lips with his teeth; and his own flesh disgusted him.
“‘I shall expect you.’ All right, old boy! You can go on expecting till you’re blue in the face.
“‘I shall expect you.’ Aw, can’t a man get no rest? Keep still or I’ll knock your teeth down your throat.
“‘I shall expect you.’ Yes, and you’ll meet me some day—in hell.
“‘I shall expect you.’”
New witnesses had appeared. In both Wisbyer and Stolpische Streets there were people who had last seen Ruth Hofmann in the company of a girl and of a huge butcher’s dog. All suspicious houses in Prenzlauer Alley had been searched. There were dives in plenty, but the place called “Adele’s Rest” attracted particular attention. In it was found a dog like the one described—a masterless dog, to be sure. Some said the dog had belonged to a Negro who worked in a circus; others that it had come from the stock-yards.
In the cellar traces of the murder were discovered. A worm-eaten board found behind a partition was black with blood. When the deed was done it must have rested on twowooden frames that still remained in the cellar. When the masterless dog was taken into the cellar, he howled. Between fifteen and twenty persons, including the innkeeper, the barmaid, frequenters of the inn, and dwellers in the house, were subjected to rigorous cross-questioning. Among the latter Molly Gutkind appeared highly suspicious by reason of her confused answers and perturbed demeanour. She was arrested and held as a witness.
Niels Heinrich had been to see her the night before. His private inquiries had confirmed the rumours that had previously come to him. It was undoubtedly she who had given refuge to the unknown boy. He determined to put on the thumbscrews. He was an expert at that.
His general impression was that she could hardly become a source of direct danger to him, but that she had gained a general notion of what must have happened. And when he recalled what Wahnschaffe had told him concerning Ruth’s brother, the connection was quite clear. If only he could have laid his hands on the boy, he would have seen to it that the latter didn’t wag his damned tongue for a while at least. It was the rottenest luck that took just him to the Little Maggot’s house. Now he’d have to make the wench harmless some way. Although he couldn’t extract three coherent words from her, and though she trembled like a straw beneath his gaze, yet she betrayed the knowledge she had gained from the boy’s delirious talk and had completed from what had transpired later. She wept copiously and confessed that she hadn’t left the house since then in her terror of meeting any one. Niels Heinrich told her icily that if she had any interest in her own life and didn’t want to ruin the boy into the bargain, she’d better not behave as much like a fool and an idiot as she had toward him. He knew a certain person who, if he got wind of her chatter, would wring her neck in five minutes. She’d better take the train and fade away quickly. Where was her home—in Pasewalk or Itzehoe? And if she didn’t fadeaway in double-quick time, he’d help her along! At that she sobbed and said she couldn’t go home. Her father had threatened to kill her; her mother had cursed her for the disgrace she had brought on them. He said if he came back to-morrow and still found her here, she’d have to dance to a less agreeable tune.
Next day she was arrested. On the day following Niels Heinrich was told that the Little Maggot, unwatched by her fellow-prisoners, had hanged herself by night on the window-bars of her cell.
He gave an appreciative nod.
But security in this one direction meant little to him. The net was being drawn tighter. There was whispering everywhere. Furtive glances followed him. Often he swung around wildly as though he would grasp some pursuer. Money was harder and harder to get. All that Karen had left brought him scarcely fifty talers. And everything that had once given him pleasure now filled him with loathing. It wasn’t an evil conscience; that conception was wholly unknown to him. It was contempt of life. He could hardly force himself to get up in the morning. The day was like melting, rancid cheese. Now and then he thought of flight. He was clever enough; he could make a fool of spies and detectives without much exertion. He’d find a place where they wouldn’t follow; he had planned it all out: first he’d leave on foot, then take a train, next a ship—if necessary as a stowaway in the coal-bunkers. It had been done before and done successfully. But what was the use? First of all he’d have to clear things up between himself and—that man! First he’d have to find out what that man knew and make him eat humble-pie. He couldn’t have that danger at his back. The man expected him. Very well. He’d go.
Though this reasoning may but have disguised an impulse stronger than hatred and sinister curiosity, the impulse itself was of driving and compelling force. He set out on thaterrand several times. At first he would be calm and determined, but whenever he saw the street and the house he would turn back. His restlessness turned into choking rage, until at last the suspense became insufferable. It was Friday; he delayed one more day. On Saturday he delayed until evening; then he went. He wandered about the house for a little, loitered in the doorway and in the yard. Then he saw a light in Christian’s room and entered.
Letitia with the countess and her whole train moved into a magnificently furnished apartment on Prince Bismarck Street near the Reichstag. Crammon took rooms in the Hotel de Rome. He didn’t like the modern Berlin hotels, with their deceptive veneer of luxury. He didn’t, indeed, like the city, and his stay in it gave him a daily sense of discomfort. Even when he strolled Unter den Linden or in the Tiergarten he was an image of joylessness. The collar of his fur-coat was turned up, and of his face nothing was visible but his morose eyes and his small but rather ignobly shaped nose.
The solitary walks increased his hypochondria more and more.
“Child, you are ruining me,” he said to Letitia one Sunday morning, as she outlined to him her programme for the week’s diversions.
She looked at him in astonishment. “But auntie gets twenty thousand a year from the head of the house of Brainitz,” she cried. “You’ve heard her say so herself.”
“I’ve heard,” Crammon replied. “But I’ve seen nothing. Money is something that one has to see in order to have faith in it.”
“Oh, what a prosaic person you are!” Letitia said. “Do you think auntie is lying?”
“Not exactly. But her personal relations to arithmeticmay be called rather idealistic. From her point of view a cipher more or less matters no more than a pea more or less in a bag of peas. But a cipher is something gigantic, my dear, something demonic. It is the great belly of the world; it is mightier than the brains of an Aristotle or the armies of an empire. Reverence it, I beseech you.”
“How wise you are, how wise,” Letitia said, sadly. “By the way,” she added in a livelier tone, “auntie is ill. She has heart trouble. The doctor saw her and wrote her a prescription; a new remedy that he’s going to try on her—a mixture of bromine and calcium.”
“Why precisely bromine and calcium?” Crammon asked irritably.
“Oh, well, bromine is calming and calcium is stimulating,” Letitia chattered, quite at random, hesitated, stopped, and broke into her charming laughter. Crammon, like a school-teacher, tried for a while to preserve his dignity, but finally joined in her laughter. He threw himself into a deep armchair, drew up a little table on which was a bowl of fruit and little golden knives, and began to peel an apple. Letitia, sitting opposite him with a closed book in her hand, watched him with delicate and cunning attention. His graceful gestures pleased her. The contrast he afforded between plumpness and grace of movement always delighted her.
“I am told that you’re flirting with Count Egon Rochlitz,” Crammon said, while he ate his apple with massive zest. “I should like to sound a warning. The man is a notorious and indiscriminate Don Juan; all he requires is hips and a bosom. Furthermore, he is up to the eyes in debt; the only hope of his creditors is that he makes a rich marriage. Finally, he is a widower and the father of three small girls. Now you are informed.”
“It’s awfully nice and kind of you to tell me,” Letitia replied. “But if I like the man, why should your moral scruples keep me from continuing to like him? Nearly allmen chase after women; all men have debts; very few have three little daughters, and I think that’s charming. He is clever, cultivated, and distinguished, and has the nicest voice. A man who has an agreeable voice can’t be quite bad. But I’m not proposing to marry him. Surely you’re not such a bad, stubborn old stepfather that you think I mean to marry every man who ... who, well, who has an agreeable voice? Or are you afraid, you wicked miser, that I’ll try to extract a dowry from you? I’m sure that’s the cause of your very bad humour. Come, Bernard, confess! Isn’t it so?”
Smiling she stood in front of him with a jesting motion of command. She touched his forehead with the index-finger of one hand; the other she raised half threateningly, half solemnly.
Crammon said: “Child, you are once more omitting the respect due me. Consider my whitening locks, my years and experience. Be humble and learn of me, and don’t mock at your venerable progenitor. My humour? Well, it isn’t the best in the world, I admit. Ah, it was better once. You seem not to know that somewhere in this city, far beyond our haunts, in its slums and morasses, there lives one who was dear to me above all men—Christian Wahnschaffe. You too, in some hoary antiquity, threw out your line after him. Do you remember? Ah, how long ago that is! That would have been a catch. And I, ass that I was, opposed that charming, little intrigue. Perhaps everything might have turned out differently. But complaint is futile. Everything is over between us. There is no path for me to where he is; and yet my soul is driven and goaded toward him, and while I sit here in decent comfort, I feel as though I were committing a scoundrelly action.”
Letitia had opened her eyes very wide while he spoke. It was the first time since the days at Wahnschaffe Castle that any one had spoken to her of Christian. His image arose, andshe felt within her breast the faint beating of the wings of dread. There was a sweetness in that feeling and a poignancy.... One had to be as capable of forgetting as she was, in order to be able to recapture for a moment, in the deep chiming of a memoried hour, the keen emotion of a long ago.
She questioned him. At first he answered reluctantly, sentence by sentence; then, urged on by her impatience, his narrative flowed on. The utter astonishment of Letitia flattered him; he painted his picture in violent colours. Her delicate face mirrored the fleeting emotions of her soul. In her responsive imagination and vibrant heart everything assumed concreteness and immediate vividness. She needed no interpretations; they were all within her. She gazed into that unknown darkness full of presage and full of understanding. In truth, it all seemed familiar to her, familiar like a poem, as though she had lived with Christian all that time, and she knew more than Crammon could tell her, infinitely more, for she grasped the whole, its idea and form, its fatefulness and pain. She glowed and cried: “I must go to him.” But picturing that meeting, she grew frightened, and imagined a rapt look she would use, and Crammon’s lack of intensity annoyed her, and his whine of complaint seemed senseless to her.
“I always felt,” she said, with gleaming eyes, “that there was a hidden power in him. Whenever I had wicked little thoughts and he looked at me, I grew ashamed. He could read thoughts even then, but he did not know it.”
“I have heard you say cleverer things than you are doing now,” Crammon said, mockingly. But her enthusiasm moved him, and there welled up in him a jealousy of all the men who stretched out their hands after her.
“I shall go to him,” she said, smiling, “and ease my heart in his presence.”
“You were wiser in those days when you played at ballin that beautiful room while the lightning flashed,” Crammon murmured, lost in memories. “Has madness overtaken you, little girl, that you would act the part of a Magdalene?”
“I’d like, just once, to live for a month in utter loneliness,” Letitia said, yearningly.
“And then?”
“Then perhaps I should understand the world. Ah, everything is so mysterious and so sad.”
“Youth! Youth! Thy words are fume and folly!” Crammon sighed, and reached for a second apple.
At this point the dressmaker arrived with a new evening gown for Letitia. She withdrew to her room, and after a little while she reappeared, excited by her frock, and demanding that Crammon admire her, since she felt worthy of admiration. Yet a patina of melancholy shimmered on her, and even while she imagined the admiring looks that would soon be fixed on her—for Crammon’s did not suffice her—she dreamed with a sense of luxury of renunciation and of turning from the world.
And while she went to her aunt to collect the tribute of that lady’s noisier admiration, she still dreamed of renunciation and of turning from the world.
A bunch of roses was brought her. But even while she gave herself up to their beauty and fragrance with a characteristic completeness, she grew pale and thought of Christian’s hard and sombre life; and she determined to go to him. Only that night there was a ball at the house of Prince Radziwill.
There she met Wolfgang Wahnschaffe, but avoided him with an instinctive timidity. She was a great success. Her nature and fate had reached a peak of life and exercised an assured magic from which, in innocent cunning, she wrung all possible advantages.
On the way home in the motor she asked Crammon: “Tell me, Bernard, doesn’t Judith live in Berlin too? Do you everhear from her? Is she happy with her actor? Why don’t we call on her?”
“No one will prevent you from calling on her,” answered Crammon. The snow was falling thickly. “She lives in Matthäikirch Street. I cannot tell you whether she is happy; it doesn’t interest me. One would have a lot to do if one insisted on finding out whether the women who drag our friends to the nuptial couch discover the game to have been worth the candle or not. One thing is certain—Lorm is no longer what he was, the incomparable and unique. I once called him the last prince in a world doomed to hopeless vulgarization. That is all over. He is going downhill, and therefore I avoid him. There is nothing sadder on earth than a man who deteriorates and an artist who loses himself. And it is the woman’s fault. Ah, yes, you may laugh—it is her fault.”
“How cruel you are, and how malevolent,” said Letitia, and sleepily leaned her cheek against his shoulder.
She determined to visit Judith. It seemed to her like a preparation for that other and more difficult visit, which she might thus delay for a little while, and to which her courage was not yet equal. It lured her when she thought of it as an adventure; but a voice within her told her that she must not let it be one.
Every time Christian saw Johanna Schöntag she seemed more emaciated and more worn. Beneath his observant glance she smiled, and that glance was meant to deceive him. She thought herself well hidden under her wit and her little harlequin-like grimaces.
She usually appeared toward evening to sit with Michael for an hour or two. She felt it to be her duty. She pretended to be utterly frivolous; yet when she had assumed a task she was pedantically faithful in its execution. On the day when she observed that the boy’s improvement had reacheda point which made her service unnecessary, so vivid a look betokening her sense of futility stole into her face that Michael gazed at her and conceived a definite idea of her character. Checked though it still was by his old terror of human beings, gratitude for her sacrifices shone in his eyes. She began to employ his thoughts; her ways were so alien and yet so familiar. He could not rise to the point of frank communication, but when she rose to go he begged her to stay a little longer. Then the habitual silence fell between them, and Johanna, not really reading, let her tormented eyes glide over the page of some French or English novel that she had brought with her. But this time he put a question to her, and after a while another, and then another; and thus arose conversations in which they sought and explored each other. Johanna was by turns superior or mocking or motherly or elusive. She had weapons and veils in plenty. What he said was didactic or shy, or sudden and heated. Her sayings were often double-edged, and confused him; then she would laugh her sharp laughter, and he would be disillusioned and hurt.
He asked her to tell him whence she came, who she was, what she was doing, and she told him of her girlhood and her parents’ house. To him who was familiar with poverty alone it sounded like a fairy-tale. He said: “You are beautiful,” and she really seemed so to him, and his naïve homage made her blush and gave her a little inner courage. But her hands, he added, were not the hands of a rich girl. She seemed surprised, and answered with an expression of self-hatred that her hands, like a cripple’s hump or the devil’s splay foot, were the symbol of what she really was.
Michael shook his head; but he now understood her poor, chilled soul with its infinite yearning and its infinite disappointment. When he asked her what was her aim in life and what her occupation, she looked at him with disturbed surprise. What aim or occupation was there for a creature like herself? On another occasion, driven by the desire forself-torment, she revealed to him the complete emptiness of her life. It was a bad joke that fate was playing on her, a medicine one had to swallow in order to be healed; and healing was where life is not.
She chatted in this strain, but told him not to be bitter. It wasn’t worth while; the world was too trivial, grey, and wretched. “If only there weren’t so many people in it,” she sighed, and wrinkled her forehead in her comic way. Yet she was ashamed before the lad too, and became conscious of the fact that her words were blasphemous. Her feeling was a torment to herself, and she did not perceive that it communicated warmth to another. Timidly she tried to measure the young lad’s power of comprehension by his terrible experience, of which she knew no details, or by the sombre earnestness of his mind that made him seem maturer than his years. And she sank even lower in her own esteem when she saw him thoughtful and moved.
But precisely the secret wound of her weakness, which she revealed to him, and the lacerating conflict which she carried on with herself—these brought an awakening to him and stirred his will to life. He said: “You should have known Ruth.” A strange shadow and yet a living contradiction of Ruth came to him from Johanna. He said again and again: “You should have known Ruth.” To her question why, he had no answer but a sudden radiance in his glance in which Ruth seemed hitherto but to have slumbered. But now her image was a flame of fire that guided him.
Johanna said to Christian: “I don’t believe your protégé needs me any longer. You certainly don’t. So I’m superfluous, and had better get out of the way.”
“I want very much to talk to you,” said Christian. “I have wanted to beg you for long to talk to me. Will you come at the same hour to-morrow, or shall I come to you? I shall be glad to do whatever you like.”
She grew pale, and said she would come.
She arrived at five o’clock. The darkness had fallen. They went into Karen’s old rooms, since Michael was in Christian’s. To the latter’s surprise the boy had suddenly expressed the desire for instruction and for a teacher to-day. He had also asked how his life was to be arranged in future, where he had better go and to whom, and from whom he might hope for help, since he was unwilling to be a burden to Christian any longer. His words and demeanour showed a determination which he had never yet displayed. Christian had not been able to answer his questions satisfactorily at once. The change caused him, first of all, astonishment; and while he preceded Johanna to light the lamp, he reflected on the difficult decision ahead.
The door to the room in which Karen had died was locked. A feeble fire of wood that Isolde Schirmacher had lit at Christian’s bidding burned in the oven. She came in now, put on another log, and tripped out again.
Johanna sat on the sofa and looked about her expectantly. She trembled at the thought of the first word she would hear and the first she would speak. She had not taken off her cloak. Her neck and chin were buried in its collar of fur.
“It’s a little uncanny here,” she said softly at last, since Christian’s silence was so prolonged.
Christian sat down beside and took her hand. “You look so full of suffering, Johanna,” he said. “What is the cause of your suffering? Would it ease you to speak out? Tell me about it. You will reply that I cannot help you. And that is true; one can never really help another. Yet once you communicate yourself to a friend, the troubles within no longer rot in dull stagnation. Don’t you think so?”
“You come to me so late,” Johanna whispered, with a shudder, and drew up her shoulders, “so very, very late.”
“Too late?”
“Too late.”
Christian reflected sadly for a little. He grasped her hand more firmly, and asked timidly: “Does he torment you? What is there between him and you?”
She started and stared at him, and then collapsed again. She smiled morbidly and said: “I’d be grateful to anyone who took an axe and killed me. It’s all I’m worth.”
“Why, Johanna?”
“Because I threw myself away to roll in filth where it’s thickest and most horrible,” she cried out, in a cutting voice that was full of lamentation too, while her lips quivered, and she looked up.
“You see both yourself and others falsely,” said Christian. “Everything within you is distorted. All that you say torments you, and all that you hide chokes you. Have a little pity on yourself.”
“On myself?” She laughed a mirthless laugh. “On a thing like myself? It would be waste. Nothing is needed but the axe, the axe.” Her words changed to a wild sob. Then came an icy silence.
“What did you do, Johanna, to make you so desperate? Or what was done to you?”
“You come too late. Oh, if you had asked me before, just asked, just once. It is too late. There was too much empty time. The time was the ruin of me. I’ve wasted my heart.”
“Tell me how.”
“Once there was one who opened the dark and heavy portal just a tiny bit. Then I thought: it will be beautiful now. But he slammed the door shut in my face. And the crash—I still feel it in my bones. It was rash and foolish in me. I should not have had that glimpse of the lovely things beyond the gate.”
“You are right, Johanna; I deserve it. But tell me how it is with you now? Why are you so torn and perturbed?”
She did not answer for a while. Then she said: “Do you know the old fairy-tale of the goose-girl who creeps into the iron oven to complain of her woe? ‘O Falada, as thou hangest, O Princess, as thou goest, if thy mother knew of thy fate, the heart in her bosom would be broken.’ I haven’t taken a vow of silence, and I haven’t a burning oven for refuge, but I can’t look at anyone or let him look at me. Go over by the window and take your eyes from me, and I’ll tell you of my woes.”
With serious promptness Christian obeyed. He sat down by the window and looked out.
With a high, almost singing voice Johanna began. “You know that I got caught in the snares of that man who was once your friend. You see there was too much time in the world and the time was too empty. He acted as though he would die if he didn’t have me. He put me to sleep with his words and broke my will, my little rudimentary will, and took me as one takes a lost thing by the roadside that no one wants or claims. And when he had me in his grip the misery began. Day and night he tortured me with questions, day and night, as though I’d been his thing from my mother’s womb. No peace was left in me, and I was like one blinded by his own shame. And one day I ran away and came here, and it was just the day on which Michael came in after the terrible thing had happened to him, and of course you had no eyes for me and I—I saw more clearly than before how low I had fallen and what I had made of my life.”
She stared down emptily for a moment; then she shut her eyes and continued. There had been an evening on which she had felt so desolate and deserted that she had envied each paving stone because it lay beside another. And so she had suddenly, with all the strength of all the yearning in her, wished for a child. She couldn’t explain just how it had come over her—that insane yearning after a child, after something of flesh and blood that she might love. Just as that day inChristian’s room she had turned his behaviour into an envious experiment and test, and had wondered in suspense how he would take and withstand the utter misery of Michael; so, on that other day, she had put her own life to the test, and had made everything dependent on whether she would have a child or not. And when Amadeus had come, she had thrown herself at him—coldly and calculatingly. She wondered whether such things often happened in the world or had, indeed, ever happened before. But as time passed it became clear that her wish was not to be fulfilled and she was not even capable of what any woman of the people can accomplish. She wasn’t good enough for even that.
But in the meantime fate had played its direst trick on her. She had begun to love the man. It could not have come about differently, for he seemed so like herself—so full of envy, so avoided of men, so enmeshed and helpless within. The likeness in his soul had conquered her. To be sure, she could not tell whether it was really love, or something strange and terrible that is written of in no book and has no name. But if it was love to cling to some last contact while waiting for the end, to be extinguished and set on fire again, so that between fire and fire no breath was one’s own, and one wore an alien face and spoke alien words; if it was love to be ashamed and remorseful and flee from one’s own consciousness and drag oneself about in terror of the senses and of the spirit and own no thing on earth, no friend or sister or flower or dream—if such were love, well, it had been hers. But it hadn’t lasted long. Amadeus had shown signs of coldness and satiety. He had been paralysed. When he had devoured everything within her that could be devoured, he had been tired and had given her to understand that she was in the way. A cold horror had struck her, and she had gone. But the horror was still in her heart and everything in her was old and cold. She could never forget the man’s coarse face in that last hour—his scorn and satisfaction. Nowshe could neither laugh nor cry any more; she was ashamed. She would like to lie down very gently and wait for death. She was so frightfully tired, and disgust of life filled her to the brim.
She stopped, and Christian did not move. Long minutes passed. Then Johanna arose and went over to him. Without stirring she gazed with him out into the darkness, and then laid a ghostly hand upon his shoulder. “If my mother knew of my fate, the heart in her bosom would be broken,” she whispered.
He understood that touch, which sought a refuge, and her silent beseeching. Resting his chin upon his hand, he said: “O men, men, what are these things you do!”
“We despair,” she answered, drily, and with sardonic lips.
Christian arose, took her head between his two hands, and said: “You must be on your guard, Johanna, against yourself.”
“The devil has fetched me,” she answered; but at the same moment she became aware of the power of his touch. She became pale and reeled and pulled herself together. She looked into his eyes, first waveringly, then firmly. She tried to smile, and her smile was full of pain. Then it became less full of herself, and lastly, after a deep breath, showed a shimmer of joy.
He took his hands away. He wanted to say something more, but he felt the insufficiency and poverty of all words.
She went from him with lowered head. But on her lips there was still that smile of many meanings which she had won.
It happened that Christian, sleeping in the rooms upstairs, was awakened by the piercing cries of the Stübbe children. He slipped into his clothes and went over.
On the table stood a smoking kerosene lamp; next to it lay a baby huddled in greasy rags. From a sack of straw two children had risen up. They were clad in ragged shirts, and, clinging despairingly to each other, uttered their shrieks of terror. A fourth child, a boy of five, indescribably ragged and neglected, bent over a heap of broken plates and glasses. He hid his face in his hands and howled. The fifth child, a girl of eight or nine, stood by her mother, who lay quite still on the floor, and lifted her thin, beseeching arms and folded hands toward the monster who was her father, and who struck the woman blow after vicious blow in the beastliness of his rage. He used the leg of a chair, and under the mad fury of his blows terrible wounds appeared on the body of the woman, who uttered no sound. Only now and then she twitched. Her face was of a greyish blue. The bodice and the red petticoat she wore were shredded, and from every rent dripped her blood.
Stübbe’s madness increased with every blow. In his eyes there was a ghastly glitter; slime and foam flecked his beard; his hair stood on end and was stiff with sweat, and his swollen face was a dark violet hue. Sounds, half laughter, half gurgling, then again moans and curses and stertorous breathing and whistling came from his gullet. One blow fell on the beseeching child. She dropped on her face and moaned.
Christian grasped the man. With both hands he strangled him; with tenfold strength he fought him down. He felt an unspeakable horror of the flesh his fingers touched; in his horror it seemed to him that the wretched room became a conical vault in the emptiness of which he and this beast swayed to and fro. He smelt the whiskey fumes that rose from the beast’s open gullet, and his horror assumed odour and savour and burned his eyes. And as he struggled on—the claws of the man, who despite his drunkenness had a bear’s strength, against his throat, that belly against his, those knees close to his own—this moment seemed to stretch and stretch to anhour, a month, a year, and fate seemed to force him into a fatal hole. All nearness seemed to become closer and turn into touch. Man, the world, the sky—all were upon him, close as his own skin. And this became the meaning of it to him—deeper, deeper, closer, closer into the horrible and menacing.
A thin, little voice sounded: “Please don’t hurt father! Please, please don’t.” It was the voice of the little girl. She got up and approached Christian and clung to his arm.
Stübbe, gasping for air, collapsed. Christian stood there, pale as death. He smelt and felt that there was blood on him. People came in; the noise had roused them from their beds. A woman took the little children and sought to soothe them. One man kneeled by the murdered woman; another went for water. There were some who cried out and were excited; others looked on calmly. After a while a policeman appeared. Stübbe lay in a corner and snored; the lamp still smoked and stank. A second policeman drifted in, and took counsel with the first whether Stübbe was to be left here till morning or removed at once.
Christian still stood there, pale as death. Suddenly every eye was turned upon him. A dull silence fell on the room. One of the policemen cleared his throat. The child looked up at him breathlessly. It had a colourless, stern old face. Its unnaturally large, blue-rimmed eyes were filled with the immeasurable misery of the life it had lived. Christian’s look seemed to charm the child. The little figure seemed to grow and twine itself about that look like a sapling, and to lose its cold and suffering and sickness and fear.
Christian recognized the heroic soul of the little creature, its innocence and guiltlessness and rich, undying heart.
“Come with me, I have a bed for you,” he said to the child, and led it past the people and out of the room.
The little girl went with him willingly. In his room he touched her and raised her up. He could hardly believe suchdelicate limbs and joints capable of motion. So soon as she lay on his bed and was covered she fell into deep slumber.
He sat beside her and gazed into the colourless, stern, old face.
And again, while he sat there, a landscape seemed to be about him.
On either side of a marshy path bare trees were standing, and their limbs protruded confusedly and crookedly into the air. The light was dim, as though it were a very early autumn morning. Heavy clouds hung down, mirroring their ragged masses in pools and puddles. Here and there were structures of brick, all half finished. One had no roof and another no windows. Everywhere were mortar-pits full of white mortar, and tools lay on the ground—trowels and spirit-levels and shovels and spades; also barrows and beams. No human being was in sight. The loneliness was damp and mouldy and ugly, and seemed to be waiting for man. All objects shared that tense and menacing mood of expectancy—the thin light falling from the ragged clouds, the marshy fluid in the ruts, the trees which were like dead, gigantic insects thrown on their backs, the unfinished brick structures, the mortar-pits and tools.
The only living creature was a crow sitting by the roadside, and observing Christian with a spiteful glance. Each time he approached the bird, it fluttered silently up and settled down a little distance ahead on a bare tree; and there it waited until he approached again. In the round eyes that glimmered brown as polished beans, there was a devilish jeering, and Christian grew tired of the pursuit. The moisture penetrated his garments, the mud filled his shoes, which stuck in the ooze at every step; the uncanny twilight obliterated all outlines, and deceived him in regard to the distances of objects. Exhausted, he leaned against a low tree-trunk, and waitedin his turn. The crow hopped and flew, now farther, now nearer; it seemed vexed at his waiting and finally alighted on the roadside, and the polished bean-like eyes lost their treacherous expression and were slowly extinguished.
A prophetic shiver passed through space. The breath of the landscape was Ruth’s name; it strained to proclaim her fate.
And Christian waited.
Niels Heinrich hesitated a few minutes before he entered the room.
It happened to be empty, so that he was alone for a little while. In this short time he succeeded in getting possession of the string of pearls.
When Niels Heinrich arrived, Christian was just about to accompany the student Lamprecht for a walk. He desired to engage him as Michael’s teacher, and he could not speak quite openly to him in the boy’s presence. He was startled and found it difficult to control himself. To leave at this moment seemed hazardous. Niels Heinrich, who was moody and irresponsible, might not await his return, nor was it advisable to leave him alone with Michael. On the other hand, Christian had waited with electrically charged nerves for this important interview. He had waited from day to day, and he desired to gather his inner forces and subdue the excitement which Niels Heinrich’s silent entering had caused him. That would take time, and his indecision and embarrassment increased while he addressed Niels Heinrich courteously and asked him to be seated. At that moment the door opened again, and Johanna Schöntag came in. Christian received her eagerly, and in over-hasty words begged her to stay with Michael until his return; then he would go to the other flat with Herr Engelschall, with whom he had matters to discuss. Johanna was surprised at his impetuousness, and also looked in surprise at Niels Heinrich. Her expression showed very clearly that she didn’t know whothe man was, and so Christian was obliged to introduce the two to each other. That seemed to him so absurd a proceeding that he only murmured the names hesitantly. Niels Heinrich grinned; and when Christian begged to be excused for a little while, he shrugged his shoulders.
The echo of Christian’s and Lamprecht’s steps had hardly died away in the courtyard when Johanna turned to Michael and said: “I was coming in to ask you to go with me to the Memorial Church in Charlottenburg. Cantatas of Bach will be sung. Do come; you have probably never heard anything like it. This gentleman will be so kind as to tell Herr Wahnschaffe where we have gone.” She looked at Niels Heinrich, but lowered her eyes at once. He gave her a feeling of profound discomfort. She had felt that discomfort the moment she had entered, and after Christian had gone, it had become so violent that she had made her proposal to Michael solely in order to avoid this hateful presence at any cost. She had had a vague intention earlier of attending the concert, but had dropped it again. The thought of taking the boy along had occurred to her but now.
“Charlottenburg, Memorial Church—all right, I’ll tell him,” Niels Heinrich said, and crossed his legs. He had been gazing at Michael uninterruptedly, and his gaze had been growing more and more sombre.
Michael had been conscious of a feeling quite akin to Johanna’s, but he endured bravely the yellow heat of those eyes. His fingers played nervously with a piece of paper on the table; his mind was seeking a hint, an image, a lost thread; he nodded at Johanna without looking at her, and followed her silently when she touched his arm. She had taken his hat and coat from the hook, and so they went.
Issuing from the house they saw Christian at the nearest corner, standing with Lamprecht under a lantern. Hastily they walked in the opposite direction.
Niels Heinrich got up. He lit a cigarette, and strode upand down with clicking steps. He stopped in front of a chest of drawers and tried each drawer. He did that mechanically, without curiosity and without definite expectation. The chest had a little top made of small, carved columns; this, too, contained a drawer. He pulled it open, and started violently as though he had been stung. Before his eyes lay a heap of enormous pearls.
Christian had almost forgotten them in the unlocked little drawer. Several days after Karen’s death Botho von Thüngen had told him that he was going to Frankfort. Members of his family were gathering there and a conference was to be held. Christian thought of taking advantage of this opportunity to send the pearls to his mother. A dreamy memory of their high value made him hesitate to entrust them to the mails. Thüngen had declared himself most willing to undertake the commission; but he never went to Frankfort. His relatives cast him off mercilessly; they were trying to get the courts to declare him irresponsible; their hue and cry robbed him of all repose, of every home, of all work. He was stripped of all means, and he had not been able to hold the woman whom he had married. She had fallen into deeper degradation than that from which he had sought to save her. In this utter distress of his, Christian had become his sole refuge and support.
Thus, in his anxiety over his friend, Christian had scarcely thought of the pearls for days. Though he had that faint memory of their value, no authentic impulse bade him secure them more carefully than in that open drawer, where Niels Heinrich’s furtive instinct had discovered them.
A long, slow, astonished whistle; a quivering of the emaciated cheeks; a look of hunger and one of criminal determination. Then a hesitation, as though even this marvellous treasure were of no import any more; and then again a burning in his eyes. The pearls promised unheard-of delights. And then again disgust: what for? He must fightout his conflict with this man. Behind him was a ravenous pack: witnesses, spies, hints, accomplices, and also the dog, the cellar, the blood, the body, the head, the Little Maggot hanged by the cord of her petticoat. And face to face with him was this man. We’ll see; we’ll measure our strength.
He reflected for some moments; then he flung out both hands, and the pearls were in his possession. There was a soft clinking, a gathering up, a shoving, and they disappeared in his trousers pocket. The pocket stuck out, but his coat hid the fact. If the man looked into the drawer and raised an alarm, why, one could fling the stuff back at him.
When Christian returned, Niels Heinrich was sitting on a chair and smoking.
“Forgive me,” said Christian. “It was an urgent appointment....” He interrupted himself, as he observed that Niels Heinrich was in the room alone.
“The young lady wants you to know that she took the boy and went to Charlottenburg to go to church,” Niels Heinrich said.
Christian was amazed. He answered: “So much the better. That leaves us undisturbed, and we can stay here.”
“That’s right. We’re undisturbed.” Next came a pause, and they looked at each other. Christian went to the threshold of the little bedroom to make sure that no one was within, then to the door that led to the hall. He turned the key.
“Why do you lock the door?” Niels Heinrich asked, with raised brows.
“It is necessary,” said Christian, “because all the people who come to see me are accustomed to finding the door open.”
“Then maybe you’d better blow out the lamp too,” Niels Heinrich jeered; “that’d be the sensible thing to do, eh? Dark’s a good place for secrets. And we’re going to fish for secrets, eh?”
Christian sat down on a chair at the opposite end of the table. He purposely disregarded the other’s cynical remark; but his silence and his tense expression aroused Niels Heinrich’s rage. Challengingly he leaned back in his chair and spat elaborately on the floor. They sat facing each other as though neither dared lose sight of the other for a second. Yet Christian continued to show his obliging and friendly attitude. Only a quivering of the muscles of his forehead and the peering intensity of his gaze revealed something of what was passing within him.
“Have you discovered anything new?” he finally asked, in his courteous way.
Niels Heinrich lit another cigarette. “Aw, something,” he said, and went on to tell that he had in the meantime discovered the woman who had hidden the Jew boy. It had been Molly Gutkind, known as the Little Maggot, and living at “Adele’s Rest.” He had followed the matter up and got the girl to confess. But on that very day, as the devil would have it, persons had come from the court and questioned her. The poor fool had probably talked more than was good for her. Anyhow, she’d fallen under suspicion and had been put in jail. There she’d evidently lost what little brains she ever had and had hanged herself. She was dead as a door-nail. That’s what he wanted to report, since the gentleman seemed to be interested. Now the gentleman knew, and had an idea of his, Niels Heinrich’s, willingness to oblige.
He blew clouds of smoke, and twirled his little beard with the fingers of his left hand.
“I knew that,” said Christian. “I knew where Michael had been; he confessed it himself. The girl’s death was reported to me this morning. Nevertheless I thank you for the trouble you have taken.”
No trouble at all; didn’t amount to nothing. He was still at the gentleman’s service. It seemed to him that the gentleman was given to detective work. Maybe he meant to takeit up professionally later. Maybe the gentleman knew something more? He, Niels Heinrich, was quite willing to be questioned. This was his expansive day. If there was anything the gentleman wanted to know he was not to hesitate but fire away.
He blinked and stared watchfully at Christian’s lips.
Christian reflected and lowered his eyes. “Since you’re so willing to give information,” he answered softly, “tell me why you removed the screw from the machine at Pohl and Pacheke’s works? You must remember....”
Niels Heinrich’s mouth opened like a trap. The stark horror simply caused his lower jaw to drop.
“You are surprised that I know of the incident,” Christian continued. He did not want the other to think that he would try to make him pliant by dealing in mysteries and surprises. “But it’s quite natural that I should. The son of Gisevius is a foreman at Pohl and Pacheke’s. He told me that you worked there for two days and that the accident happened on one of them. He didn’t connect the two acts at all; he simply happened to relate both to me. He had no suspicion; it was clear to no one but myself that you must have done it. I can’t tell you the reason, but I had an unmistakable vision of you fumbling at the machine and loosening the screw. I was forced to think of it constantly and to see it constantly. If I am wrong, you must forgive me.”
“Don’t understand....” The words came heavy with fear and in gasps from Niels Heinrich’s lips. “Don’t understand that....”
“I had the feeling that the machine seemed to you a living and organized being and therefore an enemy, and aroused in you a desire to murder. Yes, quite clearly and irrefutably, I got the feeling of murder from you. Am I mistaken?”
Niels Heinrich uttered no sound. He could not move. Roots seemed to grow from the floor and entwine themselvesabout the chair on which he sat, to creep about his legs, and hold him in an iron grip.
Christian arose. “All that is useless,” he said, taking a deep breath.
“What? What is useless?” Niels Heinrich murmured. “What? What then?” The blood in his body grew chill.
His arms pressed to his side, his hands joining below, Christian stood there, and whispered: “Speak! Tell me!”
What was he to speak of? What was he to tell? The neck of Niels Heinrich was like an emptied tube, slack and quivering.
Their eyes met. Words died. The air roared.
Suddenly Christian blew out the lamp. The sudden darkness was like the thud of an explosion. “You were right,” he said. “The light would betray us to any passerby. Now we are quite secure, from any outside thing, at all events. What happens here now concerns no one but ourselves. You can do as you choose. You can draw your revolver as you did the other day and fire. I am prepared for that. And since I shall not move from where I sit, you cannot fail to hit me. But perhaps you will wait until you have told me what is to be told and what I must know.”
Silence.
“You murdered Ruth.”
Silence.
“It was you who lured her into that house and into that cellar, and killed her there.”
Silence.
“And you made an accomplice of that poor simpleton, Joachim Heinzen, and by a well-devised plan filled him so full of fear and anguish that he deemed himself alone to be the murderer, and did not venture even to utter your name. How did that come about?”
Silence.
“And how did it come about that Ruth found no mercy in your soul? Ruth! Of all creatures! And that the knife... that the knife in your hand obeyed you ... and that thereafter you could go and speak and drink, and decide on actions and go from one house to another. With that image and with that deed within you? How is that possible?”
Silence.
Christian’s voice had nothing of its old coolness and reserve. It was hoarse and passionate and naked. “What did you want of her? What was your ultimate desire? Why did Ruth have to die? Why? What could she give you by her death? What did you gain through murdering her?”
Suddenly Niels Heinrich’s voice uttered a scream and a roar: “Her virginity, man!”
And now it was Christian’s turn to be silent.
Neither could see the other in the darkness. The heavy shades at the window created a blackness so impenetrable that not even the outlines of things were visible. Neither could see the movements of the other, but they had the sharpest awareness of each other, a horrible and physical awareness, as though they were chained and imprisoned together, forehead to forehead, breath to breath. They lacked no light, for they needed none.
The darkness gave Niels Heinrich a sense of freedom. It gave him an impulse of defiance and boastfulness and shameless self-revealment. It was chaos, massive and terrible. He did not refuse its demand that he should give an accounting of himself. It split and shattered his inward being, and liberated speech. He dared not jeer; he dropped all defences.
The darkness was a maw that spewed forth his deed. He could himself now hear what had happened. Many things seemed new to him as they were uttered. The thought thatyonder a man was listening and dragging your vitals out as though you were a dead animal—there was a certain strange stimulation in the thought. He would turn his mind inside out; then at least that man would trouble him no more. There was time enough later to take proper precautions.
As he was saying, then, it was her virginity. There wasn’t no use denying that. Every one knew how a boy like him grew up, with what sort of creatures. Sometimes they were one kind, sometimes another—red or black, sentimental or jolly, a little better, a little lower, but sluttish creatures all. Well, not exactly prostitutes, but mighty near it; on the edge of it—elegant or dirty, fifteen or thirty, every one had a rotten spot. And even if they hadn’t exactly the rotten spot yet, they’d turn rotten under one’s very hands. And what you got, you couldn’t have faith in, and once you had your claws in ’em, it was all over. So that’s the way life went—Male on Monday and Lottie on Tuesday and Trine on Wednesday; but the difference wasn’t as much as you could put on the tip of a knife. Finally, of course, you got to be like an animal that feeds on everything—wheat and tares, clover and thistles. If it burns—all right; if it tastes good—all right.
Virgins? Sure, you met virgins too. But it was all shoddy and pawed over and second-hand. They’d talk of not staying out late and being afraid of the landlady, and of marrying and buying furniture; and on the third Sunday you had ’em as well trained as poodle dogs. And anyhow, you never knew who’d stirred your soup before you. It was all doubtful, and you had no proper belief in it. Even if sometimes you met a better sort, it wasn’t never the best. They’d be coy and kittenish, and there was no naturalness and no honesty. First you had to lie to ’em and make ’em tame, and then when they got scared about being in trouble, they chilled and disgusted you so, you’d like to kill them.
Sailors who had been on long voyages had told him thatthey got so sick of the salt-meat and the pickled meat that when they landed and happened to meet a lamb or a rabbit, they felt as if they could tear the living animal limb from limb and devour the warm, fresh flesh. That’s what could happen to a man with women; that’s what had happened to him when he’d seen the Jewess. The sight of her had gone through and through him. It had pierced him as a red-hot iron will slide through ice. It had whirled him around; all his life he hadn’t had no such sensation—as if the lightning had struck him or he’d been bewitched or had drunk a gallon of alcohol. From that moment he had had a twitching in his fingers as though velvet was passing over them; he had felt a terrible avidity to touch something that moves and trembles and is warm, an avidity for the terror of those eyes and her wonderful struggles, as the depth of her soul made moan, and she wept and begged. How she walked in her inviolateness and pride, as in a haze! One wanted to lie down and have her step on one’s chest, and look up at her as at a slender column. Jesus and all the Saints! That had done for him and been the end of him! He knew he’d have to have her, if it cost him his eternal weal, which nobody gives a damn for anyhow.
He knew from the start, of course, that a being like that wasn’t for the like of him. She was like the sacrament that no one could touch but the priest. He had known that; but there was more to it than that from the start. From the start it had been a matter of life and death. There’d been no doubt about that in him at any time: she’d have to die for him—him! He had lain in wait for her, and she had fled like a deer. It had made him laugh. “You’ll come into my net,” he had said, and had fixed his eyes and thoughts on her day and night, so that she didn’t know no more what to do. She had appeared to him in vision, yes, appeared to him whenever he’d commanded her, and begged him to let her off. And he’d told her that was impossible, that she mustcome to him, that her body and blood must become his, and that he must make an end of her. Unless he did, there wasn’t no peace on earth for him nor for her either.
So he had thought out his plan. He had persuaded the besotted fool that he was crazy about the Jewess and that she was gone on him too. That had made him quite crazy and he hadn’t had an idea left in his skull, and had been soft as mush and had taken every trick and swindle as reality. So they had taken counsel and worked out their plan. They had sent the Jewess a note and had hired out the wench who carried it right afterward to an old acquaintance in Pankow. In the note they’d written to the Jewess that some one wanted her on his bed of death and that his salvation depended on her coming. Sure enough, she had come. The idiot had led her into the cellar. It had been dark there. They had locked the cellar door. Then he had persuaded the idiot to go behind the partition and had given him a bottle of rum, and told him if he so much as made a sound he might as well order his coffin, but if he’d wait, the affair with the Jewess would be fixed up for him. Thereupon he himself had returned to the cellar, and there the Jewess had stood....
He interrupted himself, and felt how the whole being of his invisible neighbour had become a breathless listening, a rapt absorption of every syllable he spoke. It gave him but a scant satisfaction, yet it urged him on. And as he burrowed in his mind and represented what he found there, the events assumed an unnatural size and seemed steeped in an atmosphere fiery-red and violet. He did not so much speak of them as let them speak to him, and thus build themselves up in a guise in which he had never yet seen them. And as he continued, his voice changed. It took on a sharper edge and became hollower, and betrayed for the first time a stirring within, a wildly gathering primordial pain.
She had stood there, he went on, and that had removed his last doubt.
“How?” Christian’s voice came, scarcely audible, out of the blackness. “How?”
He said he couldn’t describe it. She had looked about with a proud astonishment and yet a twitching of fear about her mouth. She had asked where the person was who had sent for her. On the moon, he had answered. Then what was wanted of her? Why was the iron door locked? Good reasons! Couldn’t she be told the reasons? What a voice she had had, like a little silver bell ringing in her throat. The ear drank it in like a wonderful liquor. There weren’t many reasons, he had said; there was just one. She didn’t understand. He’d try to make it plain. She had said she couldn’t think. Then he had taken her by the arm and put his arm about her shoulder and her neck. She had cried out and begun to tremble, run into a corner, and put out her hands to guard herself. The candle-light had fallen straight into her face, which had been like a white rose in the light of a flame. He had rushed toward her, and she had taken refuge behind the table. She had cried for mercy. He had laughed, laughed, utterly beside himself at the little silver bell in her throat. What a woman! God, what a woman! A child still, pure in every fibre, and a woman. It pierced him; it went into his marrow. A man couldn’t let such a woman escape him if his next hour were to be spent in hell-fire.
He had soothed her a bit and made pretty speeches and said she should listen to him. She had been willing, and he had spoken. The table with the candle had been between them—he in front of it, she behind it against the wall. He had said there was a terrible necessity; no way out—not for her and not for him. He was like one damned, and she must redeem him. He was panting for her and withering away for her—for her body and soul, blood and breath, and it had been predetermined thus since the world began. He must be close to her and within her, or the whole world would go mad and life burst with poison. He must have her, whether shewas willing or not, through kindness or force. God couldn’t help her. There was a law that compelled them both, and the hour had come. She might better yield herself, and give him the heaven he was bound to have.
Thereupon she had whispered with a rigid expression: “No, never, nevermore.”
He had gazed at her a long time.
From time to time, with a moist glance upward, she had whispered: “No, never, nevermore.”
He had warned her to put away all hope. If she resisted, it would only be the more fearful. And he had laid the knife on the table.
Christian moaned in his supreme pain as he heard this.
Niels Heinrich continued with his fatalistic outer calm. Ruth had tried to make him relent. He would never forget her words, but he could not repeat them. She had spoken feverishly, with glowing eyes, her hair falling over her cheeks; she had lifted her hands in beseeching and leaned across the table, and in her sweet, bell-like voice had spoken of people who needed her, of work and duty, of difficult tasks ahead, and also of the pleasant things in the world. And she had asked him whether nothing in the world was pleasant to him, whether his own life meant nothing to him at all, and he was willing to take up the burden of this crime before man and God. This is what she had said, only her words had been finer and firmer and exacter. At that a rancorous rage had flamed up in his brain, and he had roared at her to stop her crazy jabbering, damned Jewess that she was, and listen to him, listen to what he had to say in reply.
In silence and with a drawn expression, she had listened. Crime, he had said, crime and such talk—there wasn’t no sense in that; he didn’t know what it meant. It had all been thought out by the people who pay the soldiers and the courts to do their bidding, but who, if it served their purposes, committed the same crimes in the name of the State or the Churchor Progress or Liberty. If a man was strong enough and cunning enough, he didn’t give a damn for all their laws. Laws were for fools and cowards. If the individual has got to submit to force, he’s got the right to use force too. If he was willing to risk the vengeance and punishment of society, he had a right to satisfy his desires. The only question was whether he was willing to take up the burden of crime, and couldn’t be made to stop by the hocus-pocus invented by teachers and parsons. If he, Niels Heinrich, could work his will, there wouldn’t be one stone left standing on another, all rules would be wiped out, all order destroyed, all cities blown up sky-high, all wells choked, all bridges broken, all books burned, all roads torn up, and destruction would be preached, and war—war of each against all, all against each, all against all. Mankind wasn’t worthy of nothing better.
He could truthfully say that because he had studied people and had seen through them. He had seen nothing but liars and thieves, wretched fools, misers, and the meanly ambitious. He had seen the dogs cringe and creep when they wanted to rise, cringe before those above, snap at those below. He knew the rich with their full bellies and their rotten phrases, and the poor with their contemptible patience. He knew the bribe-takers and the stiff-necked ones, the braggarts and the slinkers, the thieves and forgers, ladies’ men and cowards, the harlots and their procurers, the respectable women with their hypocrisy and envy, their pretence and masquerade and play-acting; he knew it all, and it couldn’t impress him no more. And there were no real things in the world except stench and misery and avarice and greed and treachery and malevolence and lust. The world was a loathsome thing and had to be destroyed. And any one who had come to see that, must take the last step, the very last, to the place where despair and contempt are self-throttled, where you could go no further, where you heard the Angel of the Last Day beating at the dull walls of the flesh, whitherneither the light penetrated nor the darkness, but where one was alone with one’s rage and could feel oneself utterly, and heighten that self and take something sacred and smash it into bits. That was it, that! To take something holy, something pure, and become master of it and grind it to the earth and stamp it out.
Christian had never heard anything more dreadful. He gazed into a broken universe. Even in its pale representation, the fury of hatred burst forth like seething lava, and turned the blossoms of the earth to ashes. Horror had reached its supreme point. The fate of the immemorial race of man was sealed. And yet—the fact that this man had come hither, had had the impulse to reveal himself, that he sat there in the darkness and writhed and spoke of monstrous things and plunged into the great deeps that he had opened—in this very fact Christian perceived a shimmer of most mysterious hope, and a first faint ray of dawn upon a hitherto unknown, uncertain path.
Niels Heinrich continued. Slowly the Jewess had understood and looked at him with her great child’s eyes. She had put a question to him, but he couldn’t remember what it was. Then she had said that she saw there was no hope for her, and that it was her fate to be his victim. He had answered that her insight did credit to her understanding. Then she asked whether he knew that he was destroying himself; and he had said that he believed in no expiation, and the rest was his business. Anyhow, there had been enough talk; time was pressing, and the end must come. She had asked what she should do, and this question had confounded him, and he had had no answer to it. She had repeated the question, and he had said that the candle was burning down. Then she had asked him whether he could give her the assurance of death. Yes, he could give her that. Wouldn’t he let her die before he attacked her? No. She had grasped the knife, but he had wrung it from her. The touch of her hand haddriven him utterly mad. The walls seemed to crunch and the house to thunder. She had begged him to let her die by her own will. He could not do that, he had answered; he must get to her living heart or there was no help for him.
She begged him to grant her a little quarter of an hour; then she would be ready to die. To this he had consented, and gone out and looked after the idiot, who had lain there helpless and drunk as a swine. That had pleased him; now he could put the fellow to what uses he would. This had been proved later when he had dragged him into the cellar; and the swine still thought he could be gotten out of jail if only to the last gasp he didn’t mention the name of Niels Heinrich.
When he had returned to the Jewess, he had found her leaning against the wall with closed eyes. Her face had been very pale, but she had smiled from time to time. He had asked her why she was smiling and she had not answered, but looked at him most strangely, as though she were trying to remember something. He had gone to her behind the table and she had not stirred, and so he had grasped her shoulders. She had lifted her hands, and then he had seen that, while he was outside, she had severed the veins of both her wrists, and the thick blood was dripping down. She must have done it with a shard of glass that stuck between the bricks of the wall. He had been swept into a storm of madness, as though some one were upon him to rob him of her, and he had caught her by the hair and hurled her on the floor.