Therese had a sudden curious sensation as though she had burst some last brittle layer which had encased her. She was free! She saw all things. The awakening of which Doctor Traub had spoken had come. She was conscious of a strange resurgence of courage and fortitude, of sternness and resolution. For an instant she was aware of a blinding surge of ecstasy and complete understanding and ineffable peace.
The car came to a halt. She was before the Bishop’s residence. Or rather, before his palace. She knew the house well. How well she knew it! She had spent her childhood and girlhood here. Karl had rescued her. There was the window of her bedroom, in the round white-stone tower at the left. How often she had sat there, by that rounded large window, looking down at the street, unawakened, restless, sensitive, selfish. When Karl had come, he had come like Prince Charming, awakening a sleeper, absorbed in her own tiny affairs. And then she knew, with mournful prescience, that she had never really awakened until now. She had failed Karl. All those years of their married life, she had failed him. She had helped bring him to his present pass. Sometimes she had surprised a puzzled look on his quiet face. She had not understood. Oh, let it not be too late! she prayed, still sitting in her car and staring at the palace.
The great polished bronze door was opened for her by a shining and meticulous butler. She had not been here for some months, really over a year. But the smell of the place was as she remembered, musty, waxy, dim and pious. She stood on the dim reflection of herself on the polished floor of the hall, while the butler respectfully, almost cravenly, took her furs. Yes, the Bishop was at home. He was in his study. “Do not bother to announce me,” said Therese, curtly, walking across the acres of crimson carpet towards the study. She did not want to encounter the Bishop’s wife, a sly, mealy-mouthed, hypocritically self-effacing woman who disliked her.
All the enormous thin windows were covered with stained glass, like a church. The wan light of the autumn day came through them, changed and lugubrious. The ceilings were vast and high, and frescoed, gloomily. The furniture lurked along the dimly painted walls, and there were shadows on the walls, ecclesiastical portraits of bishops in canonical robes. She could see the gleaming white of their garments, though their features were indiscernible. It was a gallery of impotent ghosts, sterile and without humanity. Nothing had been changed from her girlhood. She remembered her hatred for all these echoing rooms, all this dolorous splendor and somberness. She remembered the deathly smell of polished decay, furniture wax, airlessness, bitter sanctity. The shade of Jesus surely never came here. He would have smothered. As I smothered, she thought.
She stood by the tall carved door of the study. Her body tightened. So she had stood a thousand times, her father behind the door. She could even hear his voice, unctuous and rolling with platitudes that meant nothing, for the spirit behind them had never lived. From this vantage point, she could see the spectral curving of the shadowy staircase, winding through the gloom. There was not a sound, not the breath of moving air, not a single opening and shutting of a door. Every door was muffled. Even the street sounds were lost here. She might have been in a chapel full of corpses. On a far distant table, through a vista of great adjoining rooms, she saw a tall vase of white roses. She could smell them. They had the odor of mortality.
She knocked on the door. The sound echoed and re-echoed through the ponderous silence. A grave rich voice bade her enter. She pushed the door open on its velvety hinges. There was the tremendous room she remembered, darkly polished floor, scattered oriental rugs, heavy and enormous tables covered with cloths embroidered in crimson and gold and decorously heaped with religious volumes, more gold-framed portraits of dead bishops on the crimson walls, churchlike chairs covered with crimson plush and enhanced by curving golden arms, high, pointed stained-glass windows admitting purple, blue and scarlet light, and, at the end, a muttering fire beneath a black-marble mantel flanked by black marble columns. Near the fire was the Bishop’s desk, huge, mahogany and polished, covered by a pile of neat paper, a huge Bible, a brass lamp, now burning with a far cold light. She could barely discern the Bishop in his black garments behind the desk. He might have been her father. Then all at once, she knew that he was indeed her father, just as the other had been.
She had thought his secretary might be there, and had hoped this, thinking it would give her a breathing space. But he was not there. The Bishop was alone.
She stood there, near the door, the wretched suffocating sensation gripping her throat. She was a young girl again, called to her father’s study, and hating and fearing him desperately. The lamplight threw a far glimmer on her white face and faintly gleaming fair hair.
The Bishop stared at her, then rose. “Therese, my child, my dear! How delightful to see you!” His warm voice was warmer, enriched by years of good living and excellent wine. He stood beneath the large wooden cross on the wall behind him, over the fire. He was a huge stout man. But beneath that cross he was dwindled and mean.
Therese fixed her eyes on the Cross like a sleepwalker. She came towards it, rather than towards her godfather. Her eyes were distended. The pure and simple Cross, that men had so defamed, had made so the mark of anti-Christ, and everything that was shameful! She wanted to fall beneath it, mutely crying for pardon, mutely pleading for mercy. She felt her hand taken in a big hot grasp, felt something touch her cheek. But she could not take her eyes from the Cross. She sat down near the desk. Her eyes were filling with tears.
The Bishop, who had retired behind his fortress desk again, was concerned. “Therese! What is the matter, my dear? Is Karl ill again?” He leaned towards her, assuming an expression of anxiety.
“He has never been well,” she murmured.
The Bishop made a clucking sound of commiseration, and shook his head. “You received my messages, my flowers, my books, Therese? I wished you to bring Karl to me. I might have given him a small measure of consolation, and hope. But he never liked me. So I could not intrude. You understand, Therese? It is man who must come to God. God cannot come to man.”
Her eyes dropped from the Cross. She regarded the Bishop in a profound and breathless silence. Her eyes grew large and intent in her pale face. She saw him clearly, gross, enormous, fat, sleek and compact. He had a large and ruddy face, with three chins, which rested on a broad black bosom. He apparently had no neck. She saw his tiny brown eyes, alert, opportunistic, crafty and cold. He had a big bulbous nose, faintly shining with oil, a brutal, insensitive nose with the wide flaring nostrils of the coarse man. Beneath that nose was a wide thin mouth, viselike and colorless, a thread of divided flesh. Above all this was a low wide brow and graying cropped hair. He was a Prussian. His head was square and boxlike, like a bull’s. His hands were curiously small, almost effeminate, pudgy and white. On one finger there gleamed a huge signet ring.
Her hatred swelled and rose in her like a consuming fire. Beads of moisture broke out on her upper lip. She clenched her hands fiercely, holding back the torrents of her disgust and hatred, and weary despair. She saw his sensuality, his greed, his avarice, his craftiness, and his all-encompassing coldness. He was Nero, in the livery of Christ.
“I thought,” she said in a strained voice, “that it was your duty to bring God to men, to take Him into strange places, and speak His word in the slaughterhouse, and the houses of pestilence.”
He stared at her blankly, and then with affront. He said, coldly: “Therese, your late revered father often complained of your impiety and lack of understanding, and irreverence. I did not believe it. Now you force me to believe it.”
She did not answer. She lifted her eyes to the Cross again. She smiled a little wildly.
But he was truly fond of her. He could see her plainly now, in the light of the lamp and struggling daylight. He saw that she was extremely ill. Her delicate bones were visible under her thin facial flesh. Her hands were gaunt and trembling. Her sunken temples throbbed. She was still a young woman, but there was a shadow of gray at those temples, blending into the fai
r hair which he had always greatly admired. He saw the violet shadows under her too-bright eyes, and the pinched blue look of her nostrils.
“My dear child!” he exclaimed, in genuine concern. “You are ill! It has all been too much for you! But surely God has sent you to me today, for comfort. I have been praying for this, and hoping very patiently. ‘Some day,’ I said to myself, ‘my goddaughter will come to me, and remember that I live only to help her.’”
He reached for a crystal decanter of wine, and poured a portion into a tiny golden goblet. He got up and brought it around the desk and held it to her lips. She made a gesture of refusal, then suddenly put her lips to the goblet and drank swiftly. The wine ran through her whole body in tendrils of flame. Courage came back to her, but a deadly hopeless courage.
“Thank you,” she murmured. He stood beside her, the empty goblet in his hand, anxiety wrinkling his fat brows. He saw that she was intolerably thin in her plain black dress. She might have been a widow. He put his fleshy hand on her shoulder and pressed comfortingly.
“My poor liebchen,” he murmured, and he was quite sincere in his anxiety and distress.
Hesitating, he went back to his desk and sat down. He put his fingers together, forming a little tent. Over it, he regarded her gravely.
“Therese, there is nothing I will not do for you,” he said in a changed voice.
He was suddenly taken aback. For she had turned to him fiercely, gripping the desk with her straining hands. He saw the knuckles spring out. He was hypnotized by the passion in her eyes, by her whiteness, which gleamed in the dusk.
“Do you know why I came here!” she cried, and her voice rose almost to a scream. “Not to see you, not for myself! Not even to help any one! Just to look at you, and tell you what you are, to your face, as you will not be told again, until you die!”
“Therese!” he exclaimed, unnerved. He glanced fearfully at the door which led to his secretary’s office. “Therese, be calm! You are hysterical. You do not know what you are saying.”
She flung up her hands with a dying gesture. “I know what I am saying. And in your heart, you know, too!”
She was trembling so violently. Her white mouth opened on a gasp. She began to weep. She pressed her handkerchief to her lips, and clenched her teeth on it. Rings of fire floated before her eyes.
The Bishop half started to his feet. He was no longer a clergyman, but only an average man confronted by an aroused woman. He was filled with terror. “I shall call Louisa,” he muttered. He rarely thought of his wife, the silly, impotent goose! But now he thought of her with relief. There was something ludicrous in his dismay, in his fallen mouth and frightened eyes.
Therese struggled to control herself.
“No, do not call Louisa,” she said, forcing her voice to quietness. “I do not want to see Louisa. I only want to see you.”
Doubtful, he regarded her intently. Then, seeing that she was becoming calmer, he slowly lowered himself into his chair again. He had to grasp the arms, and lower himself gently. Too rich living had made him a victim of the inevitable complaint of such men.
“My dear,” he said gently, “I do not understand you. I do not understand your attack. I can only believe that you are unnerved by Karl’s illness. Perhaps I should have come to you, in spite of all refusals. You must forgive my negligence. Believe me, Therese, I can only repeat there is nothing I will not do for you.”
She dropped her hands from her lips. Her flesh took on a marble-like hue. She leaned forward to regard him more clearly.
“I heard a story today,” she said, in a strangely quiet voice. “I know the woman only slightly. I dislike her. I despise her. But in despising her, I despise myself. And you. I promised her that I would appeal to you for help.…”
He was much relieved. He made another tent of his hands. He smiled benignly.
“Of course, Therese. You have only to ask. I help all who appeal to me, as you must know. And the appeal is doubly important when you ask it.”
He was affronted by her suddenly cynical and derisive smile.
“I hope you are not a liar,” she, said, the smile broadening on her face. “Forgive me, but I am quite sincere. You see, the woman is Madame Henriette Cot, one of your parishioners.”
The ominous silence which followed her words seemed to fill the great room like dark wings. The Bishop drew a long sharp breath. His benign smile faded. His face became dull and brutish, and a little fearful.
Then he said: “But—but what have you, Therese Erlich, to do with—with such a woman? A Jew? A cheap shopkeeper?” But he spoke as though preoccupied, and more than a trifle shocked. Color seeped into the folds of his flesh. His eyes shifted. “How could you know such a woman? How could she appeal to you?” His voice sharpened into outrage.
Therese’s lips twitched convulsively. “Once I should have asked myself that question, too. But now I know that one woman’s suffering is mine also. That is why I am appealing to you. She has told me the whole story. She thinks you can help her husband.”
The Bishop’s eyes dropped to his tenting fingers. His social sense was insulted. He was filled with brutal anger.
“I am amazed,” he muttered. Then on a rising note of wrath: “How dare she come to you—that person! It is not to be borne. A cheap …”
“You took her money, and her husband’s money,” said Therese, relentlessly. “Or perhaps, mein Herr Bishop, money is not cheap to you?”
His ruddy color became purple. He regarded her with little sparkling eyes like an inflamed boar’s.
“Therese! You are outrageous! I can only tell myself that you do not understand. Her husband is a Jewish criminal. He smuggled currency out of our Fatherland, in express defiance of the law, in order to aid other Jewish criminals.…”
Therese glanced at the Cross. “There was once another ‘Jewish criminal,’” she murmured.
“Do not talk like that, such blasphemy!” He shifted violently on his seat, then winced at the pain. The pain increased his rage. “I shall not argue with you! You are impossible! You have forgotten yourself, your position—everything …”
“It is not I who have forgotten,” she said, steadfastly, looking at him with her quiet shining eyes. “It is you who have forgotten. You, a Bishop, a minister of God.” Nothing could have equalled the scorn in her voice. “These people were Christians. They were among your largest contributors. You accepted their money. They were part of your flock.” Her voice changed: “Shepherd, where are your sheep?”
He was silent. He regarded her over his hands with brutal fury. A look of murder, and something else, stood nakedly in his eyes. He tried to make his voice calm and judicious over his turbulent violence.
“Therese, I need not explain to you. But I shall. In your overwrought condition, I feel impelled to talk to you, though I am afraid it will do no good. You are hysterical.
“It is no part of a minister’s place to intrude into politics. I—I am well thought of among the Nazi Party because I have prudently refrained from interference with the State. I am not like those of the Roman Catholic persuasion,” he added, with a venomous sneer. “I am no busybody priest. I render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s and unto God, the things which are God’s. That is a Christly doctrine which the Roman Catholic Church refuses to acknowledge. They interfere. They whine. They accuse, They complain. They kick against the pricks. They insist upon contradicting, if the policies of the new State touch their precious doctrines. I know of priests who have, out of sentimentality, or worse, smuggled wanted criminals and Jews out of Germany. They deserve their punishment. I, myself, know what it is bidden me to do. It is not the business of Christ’s Church to interfere in temporal affairs. Our concern is the concern of the spirit. And so, because I have observed this sacred doctrine of detachment, and concerned myself entirely with spiritual affairs, I am on good terms with every one.”
Therese interrupted. “I agree that it is a safe, and pleasant thing, to be on good terms
with murderers. It is very comfortable. And perhaps, profitable.”
His nostrils flared redly. He clenched his teeth. His voice was stifled when he spoke. “I repeat, you are hysterical. I shall ignore your wild words.
“I owe a duty to the new State, to Germany. It is not in my province, nor could I hold it with my conscience, to help criminals. This man and this woman are criminals.…”
“Because they are Jews?” asked Therese, with her bitter smile.
He shifted again, violently, and winced.
“Do not be absurd! As if that mattered!”
“It apparently must matter. You, have segregated the non-Aryans in your church.”
The purple tint rose more deeply through his jowls. “It was by request of the others in my parish.”
“And you, a minister of Christ, could accede to that! That un-Christian, that depraved, that degraded request! You could so pander to degeneracy and madness, you, shepherd of Christ! You, shepherd of the Jew Jesus!” She looked at him straightly. “I do not believe your parishioners asked that. I believe you did it on your own initiative. Or, perhaps, at the demand of the Nazis.”
“You do not know what you are saying, Therese. You do not know how dangerous your words are!” His rage was lost in his fright. He glared at the door of his secretary’s room. “Do you not know that you are talking treason? But I shall not let you involve me in this.”
He stood up, quivering like a great black jelly, dismissing her.
But she did not move. She laughed at him, thinly, wildly. He stood beneath the Cross, and the more she looked at him, and the Cross, the wilder she laughed.
“You are afraid you will lose favor, mein Herr Bishop? You are afraid the Nazis will not like you, if they hear of this? They will not believe your protestations of hatred for the defenseless and the persecuted. They will not believe that you are sincere when you deliver up your people to betrayal. They will not believe you are a good Nazi.”
Time No Longer Page 26
