The Prosecutor was silent. He drummed thinly on his desk.
And then Therese knew. It was no use. They were determined to torture and kill Herman Muehler. They would tack all sorts of lies upon him, to justify their monstrous deeds. Denials meant nothing. They were determined to do this thing. An enormous sickness struck at her heart, and she grew faint.
The troopers returned with the dossier, and then, as at a signal, they stood behind the Prosecutor, who delicately began to turn pages. “Ah, here it is. In full. He has been under investigation for a long time. But we hesitated, out of sheer magnanimity, to arrest him, hoping he would finally be convinced of his errors. It is not necessary to tell you the full contents of this report. But it is here. However, we should have done nothing, except perhaps warn him, had it not been for what he did yesterday.”
He closed the cover of the dossier with a slapping sound, and looked at them cruelly. He no longer pretended to any sly friendliness. “Frau Professor. If you wish to help your husband, you must tell me the truth. You must tell me the names of some of the Communist leaders who infested your house. We can get nothing from your husband, who continues to lie. But I will tell you what I will do: I will put in a recommendation for leniency for him if you, yourself, will give me the names.”
The Englishwoman looked at him with filmed eyes. “I do not know any names,” she said. She whispered this. She could not speak aloud, so great was her anguish. Her hands visibly trembled. “He told you the truth. I am telling you the truth now.”
He shrugged, as though regretful of such obstinacy.
The General could no longer control himself. He struck his sword upon the desk. “What is this? What are you trying to get this poor woman to say? Do you want her to lie? Do you want her to incriminate innocent people?” His great face swelled, turned purple with apoplectic blood. “Enough of this infernal nonsense! I demand the release of Herman Muehler immediately, and I warn you now, you shall suffer for this outrage!” He inhaled, and his breath came like a dying wheeze. “What has happened to Germany? I cannot understand.”
Alarmed, Therese rose and put her hand on his shoulder. He shook it off, violently. “Go away, Therese. Sit down. I cannot believe this! It is beyond my comprehension. It is a nightmare!” He struggled to his feet. “Where is Herman Muehler? Bring him to me at once, and I shall take him home with me. I am General Siegfried von Heyliger, the personal friend of the President. If I am delayed another moment, it will be worse for you, you renegade son of Fritz von Stedtreiter!”
The Prosecutor did not rise. Instead, he lifted his eyes to the General, and they were gleaming with amused malignity. He no longer pretended to friendliness and junior-officer respect. His foxlike face became evil and vicious.
“General,” he said coldly, “when will you and your kind learn that your day is done in Germany? When will you learn that you in part are guilty of Germany’s condition? You and your rigid ‘honor,’ your pettifogging, childish inadequacy, your silly ‘codes,’ your arrogance, domineering insolence! This is a new day, and unless you keep your mouth shut, unless you conform and cooperate, or, at least, keep out of the way, we shall deal with you as though you were no more than a common criminal. The Army! The Junkers!”
His face was full of pale and livid malevolence. And contempt. He spat to the side, resumed his glazed and wicked staring at the old soldier. He could hardly conceal his exultation, his hatred, his ecstasy at the General’s dreadful humiliation. Behind him, the troopers grinned impudently.
Therese was prepared for anything. She was prepared to see the General strike the younger man. She was even prepared to see him run through. But she was not prepared for the expression of appalling illness which spread over the old man’s shaking flesh. She was not prepared to see him overcome with such dreadful horror. She was not prepared for that look in his eyes. And then she knew that he understood. She knew he saw, not the Prosecutor, but a frightful vision. The old man, stupid, hidebound, fierce, rigid and uncompromising, without imagination, now had a vision. He was paralyzed before it. He was dying before it.
The Prosecutor repeated exultantly: “Your day is done! Sit down, General!” His voice rose to a mad pitch. He made the “General” sound like an obscene epithet, full of jeering and unclean innuendo. And the General stood before him, his uniform seeming all at once to be too large for him, and wrinkled, covered with fungi, its buttons tarnished, its epaulets drooping, its sword rusty, its helmet absurd. His cloak hung about him, and it was the cloak of Don Quixote, mildewed and ragged.
His flesh knew these things; his soul knew them. His majesty was gone. Germany was gone. The whole world was going. It had made majesty and heroism contemptible, fit only for the laughter of rabble. It had exalted brutishness and cowardice, dishonor and ignominy. It was the canaille on the steps of the Louvre, the Roman rabble at the gates of the Palatine. It was the galloping of asses among marble columns. And before that galloping the marble pavement cracked, and the stench of manure drowned out the odor of incense.
So must the General’s soul have known. It was not the Prosecutor’s words which were killing him. It was the thing he was seeing.
The General sat down. His eyes were glaucous. A piteous trembling shook his body. The sword lay at his feet, unnoticed, forgotten.
Therese stood beside the old man. He did not feel or see her hand on his shoulder. She was overcome with her sadness and despair. She had forgotten Herman Muehler. Herman’s wife was weeping, not loudly, but silently, her tears streaming down her face. And the Public Prosecutor watched them with sadistic glee. There was a mad gleam on his face. Behind him, the troopers waited, like wolves.
The Prosecutor lightly flipped the pages of the dossier, satisfied at last at what he had done. His voice, cold, thin, but harsh, reached the dim ears of the women.
“I will be completely frank with you. There is nothing you can do. Either you, or this—the General. Nothing. You can appeal directly to Papa Hindenburg himself. He can do nothing. You can appeal to all your friends, to von Blomberg, to Goring. They can or will do nothing. You see, I wish to save you time and misery, and false hopes.” He grinned. The mad gleam brightened on his face. He clenched his fists and beat them on the dossier. “Because such criminals as this Muehler must be stamped out Destroyed. They are a danger to Germany, and are her enemies.”
He looked at Therese. She gazed back at him, calmly, silently, her gray eyes shining and very still. For a moment he was abashed by her look, by her beauty which had become the beauty of a slender bared sword. No matter what he might do or say, he could not tarnish that shiningness. For some curious reason, he wanted her to believe he had some justice on his side. He frowned.
“I owe you no explanation, Frau Doctor Erlich. But you seem to expect one. I will give it. On Monday, this Communist criminal stood before his class, and incited them to riot, to treason. He urged them to help destroy the new Germany. He was overheard by a loyal teacher, who was standing by the door. The teacher called witnesses. They were horrified by what they heard. They went and called the Gestapo. Before the criminal had been able to run twenty yards from the University, he was taken prisoner. I cannot tell you where he is, now. But I can tell you there is no hope for him, because of the things he caused to happen.”
Therese said, coldly and scornfully, her tone denying everything he had told her: “And what did this poor man cause to happen?”
He stared at her with admiring animosity. Then he simulated anger and righteous fury: “That night, over twelve of his students attacked some Storm Troopers who had just arrested a filthy Jew. They were armed. Two of the Troopers were shot. Fortunately, a crowd gathered, and began to beat the students. But they kept up their treasonable shouting. So some of the crowd, poor misguided wretches, attacked the Troopers. Two were shot, and one was beaten to death. Then the police took a hand, and the rioters were arrested. Besides the students, nearly fifty civilians were taken into custody.” He paused, and added weightily:
“So your Communist professor caused the death of fourteen persons in the streets. More arrests were made that night, of students. Therefore, sixty people are now in custody, and of this number nearly half will be executed. The rest will be shipped to concentration camps.” Again he paused, then went on in a sepulchral voice. “You can see, now, that your friend is a murderer, and that whatever he suffers will not cover a fraction of what he did.”
Therese listened. Her limbs became stone cold. Her eyes shone like bitter ice. But the Englishwoman had stopped her weeping. She was gazing steadfastly at the officer. She began to speak so quietly, so unemotionally, that Therese started violently as at a strange sound.
“There have been times, since my marriage, when I have thought I had made a mistake, and that I had imagined the promise I saw in my husband at first. But now I know I have not made a mistake.”
She stood up. She turned to Therese, with such calm, such pride, such composure, that Therese could only stare at her blindly.
“We are wasting our time, my dear. Let us go.”
Before that courage, that steadfastness and strength, Therese’s impotent despair slunk away. She hesitated. But the Englishwoman’s eyes, so bright, so tranquil, so strong, gave her fortitude. She bent over the General, who had been sitting like granite, unmoving.
“It is all over, General,” she said, gently. “Let us go.”
He started. He looked at her with his glazed, unseeing eyes. He tried to get up. He was an old, broken man, visibly disintegrating. She had to summon all her strength to help him get to his feet. She could feel the rigid tremors rippling over his great shattered body. But he obeyed her like a numb sick child. The Englishwoman went to his side, and assisted Therese. The old man took a few feeble steps; his monumental head fell on his breast. They left the room, holding him between them. His cloak had slipped from one shoulder, and trailed behind.
The Public Prosecutor watched them go, smiling evilly. He began to laugh, throwing himself back in his chair. He laughed and laughed, striking the desk before him savagely and gleefully. The Troopers snickered.
Then the officer saw the General’s sword, lying on the floor by the chair where he had been sitting. His laughter stopped abruptly. He got up, and lifted the sword. It was heavy and ponderous in his hands. The sunlight glittered on its edge. But along its length there were faint rusty spots, like dried blood.
It lay in his two hands, the faded tassels drooping. Its carved hilt glittered. It was ancient. And useless. Its day was done. But there it lay, mighty and potent, and all at once it was no longer useless, but a symbol.
The officer stood so still, like that, with the great long sword in his hands, that the Troopers became uneasy.
That night, as Therese sat alone in her dark unlighted drawing-room, unable to abstract any warmth from her dim red fire, she was called to the telephone. It was Frau Professor Muehler. Her voice, assured, quiet, passionless and tranquil, came to Therese’s ear, without faltering, and without grief.
“Therese, my dear. I just wanted to tell you that Herman is quite safe. Quite safe. They have just sent me a box. His ashes. And now I will go back to England. There are so many there that must be told. Told so many things, Therese!”
21
It was strange, thought Therese wearily, how so many of the Biblical phrases (so trite, so tiresome and so childish she had once thought them), came with ominous pertinence to her mind these days. Now one tolled heavily in her thoughts: “All thy waves and thy billows have rolled over me.”
I can stand no more, she told herself, but all the time she was girding herself, bracing herself, for the more her prescience told her was to come. There was no end to it. There was no end to the dreadfulness that had gripped her husband. He was the specter that haunted her gloomy house, whose whispering footsteps echoed overhead, who was not there when she sought him out. When she sometimes passed him in the halls he would look at her blindly without seeming to see her, and she had come to the state where she allowed him to pass her, not speaking. Sometimes she said to Doctor Traub: “It is hopeless. He has died.” But the doctor would shake his head and say: “Patience. Patience, liebchen. You can only stand, and be ready. For surely he will find his tortuous way back. He must not find you absent when he does.”
So, she waited, hopelessly, sorrowfully, her only comfort the warm kind hands of Felix Traub and Helena. She went to them very often, sometimes every day, and they spoke simply and sympathetically, taking her into the garden and walking with her. “Patience,” they said, knowing that she was one of them as she had never been before. “Patience,” said their staunch old house and the fires that were being lighted in the golden early autumn, with its mists and mellow trees and brightening hills.
One day, as she sat alone at luncheon, old Lotte came in, with a card. Therese took it listlessly. She was not receiving visitors. But she was surprised when she read the name: “Madame Henriette Cot.” The smart French proprietress of a chain of Berlin beauty salons, one of which, the smartest, Therese had once patronized. She knew the Frenchwoman only slightly, and did not like her, though she had been condescendingly pleasant to her.
“How strange,” she murmured. Was it possible that the woman was calling to see her about her long absence?
She said, “Lotte, please tell Madame Cot I am not receiving any visitors. My husband is ill.”
Lotte set her hands on her broad hips. “I told her so, Frau Doctor. But it was no use. She was very urgent. She seemed quite agitated.”
Therese frowned. “I hardly know her. How very extraordinary. Why should she come to me?”
She hesitated. “I will see her,” she said indifferently. She went into the cool dim drawing-room, so cold and unfriendly these sad days. The Frenchwoman rose nervously upon Therese’s entry. Therese stood in silence, fingering the card, her manner forbidding.
“Frau Erlich!” said the woman. Her normally hoarse and affected voice broke.
“Please sit down,” said Therese. Her sharpened senses detected the note of anguish in the other’s voice. She sat near her, and waited, shrinking a little, her nostrils pinched against the exotic scent that floated from Madam Cot’s person.
Madam Cot was a small, beautifully corsetted, buxom little woman, very smart, very chic, very dark, and extremely artificial. The typical beauty culturist. Her sallow face was exquisitely enamelled; her shining lacquered hair perfectly waved. She wore her usual black satin, and a pair of silver foxes. Her tilted hat was in the latest mode, her satin slippers revealing her small dainty feet. Her features were small and pert and vivid, her mouth heavily rouged, and her eyebrows beaded. She had sparkling black eyes, which resembled bits of black-currant jelly. Her only ornaments were a large diamond ring and the large platinum and diamond cross she always wore around her rather short plump neck. Her age might have been anywhere in the region from thirty-five to forty-eight. It was one of her many mysteries.
Today, she looked more than forty-eight. Under the enamelled mask agony peered out. The red lipstick could not conceal the withered pallor of the mouth beneath. Wrinkles sprayed about her gleaming eyes. She kept touching the cross at her throat.
She smiled. The smile was a ghastly parody of her professional smirk, hard, blank, effusive and servilely dignified. Therese had always detested that smirk, seeing above the wide red lips with their shining teeth to the jetlike eyes with their knowing and merciless expression. The woman’s eyes had reminded her of Maria’s; they had the same cunning and malicious look. She had often idly wondered of what such a woman thought, if there were any human softnesses or vaguenesses behind the lacquered mask. She thought not. But how disconcerting to have to live with that inner personality! How distorted, how obscene, how dirty and vile the world must seem to such eyes and such a personality! Her dislike and impatience grew.
Madam Cot, who was the shrewdest and most calculating of women, saw Therese’s aversion, concealed though it was by a film of polite formality. A dull color crept
under the enamel and suffused her eyes. All at once those eyes filled with bitter and reluctant tears.
“Frau Doctor!” she stammered, and her daintily gloved hands extended themselves to Therese with unaffected and simple desperation. “You—I know you think it extraordinary that I have come to you, and wonder why I have come! But I have felt that I have known you for a long time—I do not know where to turn, or to whom to appeal.…”
Then Therese knew that here was a soul bewildered by anguish. The mask had cracked. The human face was contorted behind it. She dropped her gaze considerately to the diamond cross, now trembling visibly on the woman’s breast.
“How can I help you?” she asked gently.
The woman fumbled in her glacé-kid bag, and withdrew her cobweb of a handkerchief. It was impregnated with her own scent-invention, “Cot 121.” Therese recognized it, a heavy and sensual odor weighted with musk. She tried to conceal her growing aversion, though her delicate nostrils whitened and drew in again.
Madam Cot put her handkerchief to her eyes, to remove the scalding tears. Such women cried reluctantly. Their tears were blood and acrid salt.
You know of my husband, Frau Doctor? Henri Cot, the broker? You knew that he dealt in international banking stocks?”
Therese murmured noncommittally. She had not known.
The woman gave a hard and wrenching sob. “They—the Gestapo—had accused him of smuggling stock and currency into France. You know we—we were born in France, though are now German citizens? They—they said he did this to prepare for emigration, or to help some former clients of his—Jews.…”
Therese glanced up quickly. “You may be frank with me, Madam Cot. Did he help his Jewish clients?”
Madam Cot hesitated. A sudden malignancy glared in her eyes, then vanished. “Perhaps, Frau Doctor. I—I warned him. He told me nothing, however. There was a softness in him, at times, though only I suspected him. But—they could find nothing. They had only their suspicions. Because some of Henri’s Jews were able to pick up deposits in London and Paris. How could he be so indiscreet, and he always so sensible, usually! So unpatriotic! I do not know. I, too, have my suspicions. At first I thought: ‘He must bear his punishment. He is no true German, to help those abominable Jews.’” Her voice dropped to a whimper, and she regarded Therese with a sort of wild bewilderment and amaze: “So I told myself. And then I discovered—how childish it is!—that I still loved him!”
Time No Longer Page 24
