Upon reading this, the pathetic old General had momentarily collapsed. His innocence (and how innocent were these grand old warriors!) was torn and bleeding, brutally assaulted and thrown down. His flesh felt wounded; he was mortally stricken. The light of the horror blinded his eyes. He could not look at it. He had raged for hours, stamping and foaming through the house, after his first numbing shock. He cursed and threatened everything and every one, except that obscenity that had wiggled its snakelike way from Austria into the heart of Germany. Even in his extremity he could not bring himself to speak that loathsome and putrid name. It would be like giving vent to some indecent sound.
Old warrior friends came to sit with him, as mourners come to the coffin of a comrade. They had sat with him, not speaking, mourning for themselves as well as for him. They, too, were innocent. They could not understand. They could only suffer. They sat about him, in silence, and he sat, too, not speaking. Then at last, he tried to speak, but when he did so he gave only a strangled murmur, and then had burst into the terrible, bloodlike tears of the old and the lost.
But he was still too innocent to be broken permanently. At least, Therese, knowing the foul story, hoped this was true. After a few days he said: “I am glad, I am proud, that I have been removed from the lists of the Nazis! I belong to Germany, and Germany belongs to me. We have only to wait!” Soon, his walk was even heavier and more majestic than ever. There was a sparkling of waiting triumph in his eyes, and he developed a knowing, secretly lofty expression, as though privy to important confidence. His dignity was more in evidence than it had been at any time. He became more intolerant, more insistent upon discipline in his household, more exacting, more stern. He was like a man attempting to hold shut the iron door of a citadel with the weight of his body and his bleeding hands. He had given up, for some time, his twice-daily walks, reserving his old strength for a stroll at sunset. Now he walked again at dawn, marching rigidly through the streets, and his neighbors could hear that ponderous pacing through the quiet of the echoing morning. Against his doctor’s orders, he exercised, rode, fenced, walked, and resumed in all a vigorous life. He took on new color and vitality and fierceness. He induced his comrades to do likewise. They were less, or more, simple than he, and complained. But he bullied them violently into obedience. Soon, they were doing military exercises in his garden, much to the scandalized amusement and concern of the neighbors, who still had much affection for the old regime.
Therese had often heard her father’s cousin laughed at and called “a typical old military idiot of the military school—really very stupid, you know.” She had agreed, secretly. But now she was not so sure. As the days passed, and she saw more of the General, she listened more closely to his expressed contempt for “the rabble,” his proud repudiation of all that the mob represented, his gentleman’s aversion for the mongrel horde, his passionate belief in the eternal durability of the virtues of austerity, courage, discipline, class pride, valor, birth, breeding, and restraint. “The Old Junker,” as her daintier friends called him disdainfully, represented something which Germany had lost, but which surely she must regain if she were to survive. He might be overweeningly egotistic and narrow; he might be utterly devoid of the “culture” and sophistication of the twentieth century; he might be an innocent; he even might be stupid. But he was a rock in a weary land, rugged but indomitable, simple and uncompromising. He was the Old Army, in many more ways than one.
She watched him, tonight, as he came towards her, and never had she felt such affection for him. He was nearly six feet six in height, and unbelievably broad in proportion. His feet and hands were enormous. He had a huge broad face, truculent and fierce, the color of ripe tomatoes, and fringed with snow-white silken sideburns. His thick white mustache curled upwards, a fixed replica of the Kaiser’s. The ends, waxed and brittle, pointed inexorably to little blazing blue eyes, choleric and bellicose. His prow of a nose jutted arrogantly; his lips were broad, almost spatulate, and wore their usual expression of intolerance and ferocity. He was almost completely bald; his round pink skull, like a dome of rosy granite, shone in the candlelight. He wore his dress uniform, old-fashioned in cut, but impressive, and his many medals and ribbons formed a shield on his massive breasts. He even wore his sword, clanging, at his side. One of his crimson cheeks was wrinkled and drawn by a deep sabre cut received in his gallant and turbulent youth.
“Ah, liebchen!” he exclaimed fondly, in his deep rumbling voice. He took both her hands and kissed them with paternal affection. “You are a rare visitor, but like everything that is rare, you are precious.”
She smiled at his old-fashioned gallantry. She was pale and cool in her classic gray gown, shot through with pale threads of silver. Her light smooth hair rose above her serene forehead like a glimmering wave.
“But you are not looking well,” he said, squinting at her anxiously. “You are thin. But your color is remarkably high.”
Had she put too much rouge on her drained face? She hoped not. But she had had to do something to hide her fatigue and pallor, and her colorless lips.
He now noticed the absence of Karl, and asked after him. His tones were a little reserved, for he was suspicious of Karl, and timorously disliked him as one of those intellectuals who always found him stupid.
Therese explained that Karl was unwell. The old General, in spite of his words of concern, was visibly relieved.
“Ah, that is bad. He works too hard, perhaps? Or, he still grieves over his sister, the little Gerda? That poor child. We have come on bad days,” he added, shaking his monumental head, his great face darkening. “I am sorry that Karl is not here. I have invited one of his acquaintances, the writer, Herr Doctor Paul Lesser, who greatly admires him.”
Therese knew that Paul Lesser was a very minor if pretentious writer, and Karl detested him and always avoided him. She was glad that her husband had not come tonight, for Karl would have inevitably gotten into one of his irritable, impatient arguments with the affected tyro. It was always as if Karl were outraged that amateurs and would-be artists dared invade the sacred porticoes of literature, and dared lift their donkey-voices among the columns. Their talks about the “meaning of art” infuriated him. “One might as well talk about the ‘meaning’ of the sky, or the sun, or the earth,” he would say. “Only the pseudo-artist is solemn and sententious about his ‘art.’” Inevitably, he would become insulting, and only bad feelings followed. Karl, at these times, was impossible.
Visible regret now showed in the General’s expression that he had gone to the trouble of inviting Paul Lesser, and having to endure his high-flown conversation. To the General, the pseudo-artist and the real artist were the same thing. They all wrote, did they not? It was sufficient for him, and horrible in any event. Now he was saddled with the pretentious fool. It was really too bad of Karl. Nevertheless, one artist was easier to endure than two, even if those two became engrossed with each other. Too, the women always loved artists. Possibly one of them would be absorbed in him, and take two undesirables off his sweating hands.
The General’s wife now came fluttering to greet Therese. She was his second wife, and childless, as had been his first. She was considerably younger than he, a slender, agitated, gasping woman, and a fool. Therese pitied her. It must be a dreadful strain to live with the bellowing General. She had once been pretty; now at forty-five, she still bore fragile if worn traces of former beauty in her bright, strained blue eyes, a little popping, and withered, rose-leaf skin. Her blond hair was elaborately curled and swirled, and she had coquettishly tucked a pink rose in its masses. Her smile was fixed and artificial, showing good if large and prominent teeth in a perpetually anxious grin. Always, before greeting any one else, she would shoot an apprehensive glance at her husband, to see whether he would need placating. Her pale-pink chiffon gown floated about her as though constantly disturbed by unseen winds.
She was delighted to see Therese, for the General could always be counted on to be at least temporarily
amicable in her presence. She kissed Therese with thin but genuine enthusiasm, and Therese held her breath to avoid choking on the passionate and overwhelming perfume which flowed from the other woman. Poor Martina had always harbored the coquettish belief that she was a femme fatale, and still harbored it, despite stringy shoulderblades, flat bosom, and puckering skin. She was amiable, vapid, voluble and incoherent. If she had any ill-tempers, vices or conceits, they had probably all been beaten and flayed out of her fleshless body, leaving only anxieties, smiles, apprehensions and alarms behind, with a warm-water flood of sentimentality.
“O my darling Therese, how delightful to see you!” she cried in her shrill but gentlewoman’s voice. Therese guessed, from her tone, that she had not had an easy past hour with the General, for her manner was too hysterically gay. Her conjecture was correct, for the General was now glowering behind her back. Therese further guessed that some of the guests were entirely Martina’s fault, and Siegfried had been punishing her with his usual lack of tact, his usual fury and abusiveness. No wonder the poor creature was delighted to see some one who could exercise some control over the huge boar, and like Circe, make him a man again.
Therese never knew whether Martina liked or disliked her. Probably the unfortunate soul never liked any one or disliked him. She had no time for likes or dislikes, absorbed as she was in the furious vortex of the General’s own daily preferences. Therese had no aversion for Martina, as she usually had aversions for the shallow and the weak and colorless.
Therese explained to Martina that Karl could not come, but had sent his regrets. Martina listened vaguely, her popping, strained blue eyes darting about. She hardly heard. She thought that she had heard some sound from the General, and was anxiously intent on it. But she murmured: “Of course, of course!”
“And now, let us go back to the fools,” said the General, in a heavily playful voice, flashing a look of violence at his wife.
“The General is so amusing, is he not?” bubbled Martina, with a desperate little laugh, and a look of complete and embarrassed terror on her face.
“Oh, very, exceedingly,” responded Therese, laughing slightly, and giving the General a fondly admonishing smile. At her arch glance, he had to smile himself. He was immediately in a better temper. He ceremoniously offered his arm to Therese, leaving his wife to trail behind. He could always be placated, Therese knew, by references to his enormous wit and humor, neither of which he possessed in the slightest.
Four gentlemen and three ladies were waiting in the drawing-room. The atmosphere had completely subdued them. They sat in the dim gloomy light as close to the fire as they dared, utterly swamped by the tremendous mahogany furniture and cold, prism-hung lamps.
The men rose ceremoniously, but the first thing that Therese noticed was that the huge and scowling portrait of General von Hindenburg was missing from its station over the black-marble mantelpiece. It had hung there for several decades, longer than Therese could remember. It had been taken down; the room it had dominated seemed to have lost its soul and its character. Nothing had replaced it; the space was dark and blank against the rest of the wallpaper, which had faded. Nevertheless, that sharp dark rectangle was more significant than the portrait had been. The eye was drawn to it inevitably, with a feeling of lostness and mournfulness.
Therese was pleased to see that among the guests were Herr Professor Herman Muehler and his English wife. The Herr Professor taught literature and poetry at the University, and was one of Karl’s few close friends. Tall, slender, bent, though he was still in his forties, gentle-mannered and sardonic, he inspired instant respect because of the aura of integrity and thoughtfulness which surrounded him. His dark hair was thin, and he was partially bald. He was not handsome; his nose had a Hebraic formation about it, though he was of the purest “Aryan” stock. His features hinted of a Hapsburg strain for he had the jutting underlip, forgotten when he smiled his singularly sweet smile, and eyes set too close together on each side of a high bridge, and too high under thick black brows. One saw instantly that he was the only gentleman present among the other guests.
His wife, Elizabeth, was a comfortable cosy little woman with pink cheeks, dowdy clothes, and a gay smile. She was famous for her good sense and excellent housekeeping and warm hospitality. She was much more German in appearance, conversation and manner than her husband, but Therese rightly suspected that under it all the Briton lurked, watchful, a little amused, more than a little opportunistic, and completely hard-headed. She was no fool.
Of the other three men she knew only one, Herr Doctor Paul Lesser, the intellectual and the pseudo-writer, who was experiencing a fitful popularity in Berlin at the present time, due to his theatrical and somewhat violent last novel, The Passionate Land. She knew him only slightly, as he was one of Karl’s pet hatreds. A bachelor, and intolerably affected, he wore British clothes and a monocle. The monocle gave him, at first, an illusion of virility, immediately belied by his fat puffy pink face and querulous, pulpy pink lips. His eyes were prominent and full of belligerent conceit and arrogance. But there was about him a certain effeminacy and weakness, which, combined with the arrogance, made one think of a masculine woman. His voice had the hoarseness and insistence of such a woman’s, and he had a certain affected way of pronouncing adjectives and phrases as though he valued and enjoyed them as a gourmet enjoys exquisite cooking. “Words,” he would often say, “are the colors on a palette. One must choose them as carefully as an artist chooses them.” He struck attitudes. This, Therese found the most annoying thing about him. She could not forgive his affectations, of speech and poses, though well understanding that these were the protective dress of the incompetent and the inferior. He was the fool warned of by the Koran—the fool that did not know he was a fool.
She turned away from him with distaste, without allowing him to kiss her hand and rhapsodize about how charmed he was to see her, and how prostrated he was not to be allowed to converse once more with Karl. She looked with relief at the other strangers, waiting for introductions.
Captain Baldur von Keitsch. The son of one of the General’s old friends. A huge stout smiling man in his forties, uniformed and medalled and epauletted to the last inch. Once his face had been delicate and handsome, and the ladies of Berlin had been hypnotized by his leanness and his extraordinarily deep gray eyes. His voice was rich and beautiful, and warm as new milk. Now he was enormously stout and bulging, and even his military uniform could not detract from that expanded belly, immense jellylike buttocks and swollen thighs. Nevertheless, he was still handsome, and his full-colored broad face, his jovial smile, his brilliant eyes, and his charming manner, still had power to undo women and make men his indulgent and affectionate friends. He was not a fool. Only a few guessed that he was a dangerous man, completely foul, completely without a single touch of humanity, compassion, honor or integrity.
Therese had never met him before. He beamed down upon her warmly. He kissed her hand lingeringly. His eyes dwelt upon her with amorous boldness, seeing everything, and full of licentious admiration. He was no plebeian; a reptilian mind as sharp as steel, and as supple, meshed behind that open masculine face. Therese, with the new sad prescience which had come to her these dolorous days, knew of this mind immediately. It was a profound shock to her. Never, in her austere and remote experience, had she met such a man before, or, at least, never had she recognized him. Despite the horrors of the present, her calm and judicious mind had repudiated much of what she had heard. She had called it “hysteria” and “melodramatic exaggeration,” and even “propaganda.” Now she believed everything, and was disgusted at her previous aristocratic incredulity. She had refused to believe that the Germany she knew could be guilty of such men. Objectively, she had known it; subjectively, she had rejected it. The merging of her two awarenesses paralyzed her with horror. The spots of rouge on her cheeks stood out like badly painted patches on her extreme pallor. Nevertheless, she retained her calm dignity and poise over the sickness in her hear
t when she was introduced to the next gentleman, Herr Heinrich Schmidt.
He was all elegance and polish, dark, slender, tall and handsome, with the most charming and magnetic smile she had ever seen. She had heard of him, from the newspapers, from the whispers. What his position was with the National Socialist Party no one knew exactly, but that he was extremely potent and actively sinister was known to all. His manners were exquisite; he was a man of rare intellect. His father had been a personal friend of the last Kaiser, and his blood was excessively noble, coming as it did from a long line of Junkers, professors, scientists and scholars. His mother had been Baroness Hermine von Markowski, related to both British and German royalty. Immensely rich, mysterious in his activities, a personal friend of Hitler’s, fascinating and almost beautiful, he was irresistible to both men and women. The latter incoherently raved of his profile, his waving dark hair, his white smile, his lovely courtesy. He was a bachelor. It was now rumored that he was to be attached to the German Embassy in London, because he was well-favored by the British and had been educated at Oxford, and was alleged to be an Anglophile.
After he had kissed Therese’s hand, he gazed at her ardently.
He said: “I know your husband, Frau Doctor. We need men of his accomplishments in the new Germany.”
Therese replied: “My husband is ill. Moreover, he is not interested in politics. He is a man of letters, you know.”
Herr Schmidt smiled slightly. “Even men of letters must realize that we have a new order, and the Fatherland needs every hand and every brain.”
Therese paused. She looked into those actor’s eyes, and the familiar painful thrill ran along her nerves. She had known instantly that Captain Baldur von Keitsch was dangerous. Now she knew that this danger was the danger of a wild beast’s. But this man was all evil, all deadliness. She had the appalling sensation that she was face to face with a serpent, the embodiment of wickedness. I must keep my balance, my control, she said to herself, trembling. I must not let myself be swamped by my own imagination.—But she knew, in spite of this, that her awakened senses were not lying. The cataracts of habit and convention had been removed from her eyes, and she saw with a clarity and sharp dreadfulness as she had never seen before.
Time No Longer Page 16
