by Vicki Baum
He raised one arm from the bed and took the clasped hands from her mouth and kissed them; they were wet with tears and black like the hands of a little girl; her face, too, was stained with the trickles of black tears from her theater makeup. This made Gaigern laugh. In spite of her tears Grusinskaya observed the hearty movement of the shoulders that strong men have when they laugh. Gaigern left her bed and went into the bathroom. He came back with a sponge and carefully wiped her face. He had brought a towel too. Now Grusinskaya lay still. She was all cried out and was content to let him do it. Gaigern sat on the edge of the bed and smiled at her.
“Well?” he asked.
Grusinskaya whispered something that he did not understand. “Say it again,” he begged her. “You—kind man,” Grusinskaya whispered. The words hit home. They hit his heart like a tennis ball in fast play. It almost hurt. The women with whom he usually got involved had no great range of endearments. They called him Shnurzi, Bubi, Darling or the Big Baron. He heard an echo in his soul as though from his childhood, from a world he had left behind. He shut his ears to it. If only I had a cigarette, he thought, feeling that he was getting softhearted. Grusinskaya had looked into his eyes for a moment with a strangely melting and almost happy expression. Now she got up and was angling with her long toes for the slippers, which had fallen from her feet and immediately became a self-assured lady.
“Oh là là,” she said. “What a sentimental scene. Grusinskaya weeping. That is a sight worth seeing. It has been many years since she did such a thing. Monsieur gave me a bad fright. It is he who is responsible for this painful scene.”
She spoke in the third person, wishing to put a distance between them, but after what had passed it was not easy to do so. Gaigern had nothing to say in reply.
“It is frightful how the stage frays the nerves,” she went on, in German, for she thought that he had perhaps not understood. “Discipline! Oh yes, we have plenty of that. But discipline is horribly exhausting. Discipline means always doing what you don’t want to do and take no pleasure in doing. Have you experienced the weariness that comes of discipline?”
“I? Oh, no. I do only what I take pleasure in doing.”
Grusinskaya raised a hand to which all its former grace had returned.
“I see, Monsieur. You take pleasure in coming into a lady’s bedroom, and so you come. You take pleasure in a dangerous climb onto a balcony, and so you do it. And what is your pleasure now?”
“I should like to smoke,” Gaigern said frankly. Grusinskaya had expected something else and the reply struck her as chivalrous and considerate. She went to the desk and offered her little cigarette box. She stood there in her worn, but genuine Chinese kimono and her trodden-down slippers, and all the charm and glitter and prestige that for twenty years had surrounded her on her travels throughout the Continent, surrounded her once more. She had forgotten apparently how tear-stained and utterly wretched she looked.
“We’ll smoke a peace pipe then,” she said and raising her long and much-creased eyelids she looked into Gaigern’s face. “And then bid each other adieu.”
Gaigern greedily inhaled the smoke of his cigarette. He already felt a great relief, though his situation was still a precarious one. For one thing, he could not possibly leave the room so long as the pearls were in his pocket. If, now that she knew him, he were to keep the pearls he would have to flee that night and in the morning he would have the police on his heels. This would not suit his plans at all. Everything now depended on remaining in her room at all costs until the pearls were conjured back into their jewel case.
Grusinskaya was now sitting in front of the mirror, intently powdering her face. She removed a line here and a mark there. She was beautiful once more.
Gaigern went up to her and interposed his big body between her and the rifled case. Over her shoulder he launched a sweet and seductive smile.
“Why do you smile?” she asked into the mirror.
“Because I see something in the mirror that you cannot see,” said Gaigern. He simply switched to the familiar form of address. The cigarette had restored him and now he felt in good form. Here we go, he thought, spurring himself on. “I see in the mirror what I saw before when I was standing on the balcony,” he said bending over her. “I see in the mirror the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. She is sad, this woman, and she is naked. She is—no, I cannot say it or I shall go mad. I did not know it was so dangerous to look into a woman’s bedroom while she undresses—”
And, indeed, as Gaigern strung together these gallantries in his school-taught French, he actually saw a vision of her in the mirror as she had been, and he felt again the warmth of admiration that he had felt on the balcony. Grusinskaya listened skeptically. How cold I have become, she thought sadly, when no tremor of response greeted these ardent words. She felt the deep shame of a cold woman. She turned to Gaigern with a consciously effective curve of her long neck. Gaigern took her shoulders in his warm and adroit hands and then kissed her deliberately in the beautiful hollow between her shoulder blades.
This kiss, at first cool and remote, lasted long. It penetrated to her spine like a burning needle and her heart began to beat. Her blood became heavy and sweet. Her frigid heart began to throb and flutter. Her eyes closed, and a tremor went through her. And Gaigern was trembling too when he released her and stood upright. A vein stood out blue on his forehead. Of a sudden his whole being was aware of her, of her skin, of the sharp scent of her body, of her slowly awakening anticipation of delight. The Devil, he thought abruptly. He stretched out eager hands.
“I think you had better go now,” Grusinskaya said weakly to his reflection in the glass. “The key is in the door.”
Yes, the damned key was there now right enough, and now he could go if he felt like it. But now he didn’t feel like it—for more reasons than one.
“No,” he said with a sudden air of command to the woman, who trembled like a resounding violin. “I am not going. You know that I’m not going to go. Do you really think I would leave you alone here—I—you?—with a teacup full of Veronal? Do you think I don’t know the state you are in? I am going to stay with you. Basta!”
“Basta? Basta? But I wish to be alone.”
Gaigern quickly went up to her, took hold of her wrists and held them to his breast. “No,” he said vehemently. “That is not the truth. You do not want to be alone. You are horribly afraid of being alone. I can sense how afraid you are. I know you, you strange little woman. It’s no use play-acting with me. Your theater is of glass and I see right through it. You were desperate just now. If I go away now, you will be more desperate than ever. Say that you want me to stay with you. Say it.”
He took her by the shoulders and shook her. He was wrought up, she knew. Otherwise he would not have hurt her. Jerylinkov had begged, she remembered. This man commanded. Weak and relieved, she let her head fall on the breast of his blue silk pajamas.
“Yes, stay a moment,” she whispered. Gaigern, looking away over her hair, let out a deep breath through his teeth. The crisis of fear began to relax while a whirl of pictures passed quickly before his eyes, as in a film. Grusinskaya dead in her bed with a fatal dose of Veronal in her veins, and himself flying across rooftops for his life, and a search of the house at Springe and then the prison cell. He had no idea what it was like in prison, but he saw it distinctly all the same. He saw his mother too. She died all over again, although she had died long ago. When he came back to Room No. 68, the menace of fear and danger changed to intoxication. He lifted Grusinskaya up in both arms and held her to him like a child.
“Come, come, come,” he murmured in a low voice with his lips pressed to her temples. Grusinskaya had not been aware of her body for a long while. She was aware of it now. For years she had not been a woman. She was a woman now. A black, singing heaven began to revolve above her and she rushed up into it. A little bird-like cry came from her open mouth and drove Gaigern out of his make-believe into genuine passion and into a depth
of joy such as he had never known. The teacup on the table rattled lightly whenever a car went by below. At first the white light from the ceiling was reflected in the poisoned liquid, then only the red of the table lamp and then only the intermittent light from the electric sign shining through the curtains. Two hours raced by. From the passage came the click-clack of the elevator. The distant church clock struck one amidst the hooting of the night traffic, and ten minutes later the electric lighting was once more in working order on the front of the Grand Hotel.
•
“Are you asleep?”
“No.”
“Are you comfortable?”
“Yes.”
“Your eyes are open, I can feel it. I feel your eyelashes on my arm when you open and shut your eyes—a big man with eyelashes like a child’s. Tell me are you content?”
“I have never been so happy as now.”
“What did you say?”
“No woman ever made me so happy.”
“Say it again—say it.”
“I have never been so happy.” Gaigern murmured into the cool softness of her arm where his head lay. It was the truth. The indescribable appeasement filled him with gratitude. He had never known this in his commonplace love affairs—this intoxication without disillusionment, this thrilling calm after the embrace, this deep intimacy of the body with another’s body. His limbs lay relaxed and at peace beside hers, their senses shared a mutual secret. He experienced something that has no name, not even the name of love, a homecoming after long homesickness. He was still young, but in the arms of the ageing Grusinskaya he became still younger through the spell of her tender, experienced, and thoughtful caresses.
“Too bad,” he murmured into her arm; he pushed up his head a little higher and made a pillow of her shoulder, a little warm nest where there was the scent of a meadow. “I would know you anywhere in the world, blindfolded, by your perfume,” he said, sniffing like a puppy. “Tell me what it is.”
“Never mind. Tell me what’s too bad? Never mind the perfume, it has the name of a little flower that grows in the fields—Neuwjada. I don’t know what you call it. Thyme? It is made for me in Paris. Tell me, what is too bad.”
“That one always begins with the wrong woman. And so one goes on stupidly, night after night, for a thousand nights and thinks that’s what it has to be like, so cold afterwards leaving you with such a bad aftertaste, as vexing as an upset stomach. What a pity that the first woman one slept with was not like you.”
“Oh, you’re a spoiled child,” whispered Grusinskaya. She buried her lips in his hair. It was warm and thick, with a masculine odor of cigarettes and shampoo. He passed his fingertips down her sides and felt her breath come and go.
“Do you know, you are so light. As light as anything. No more than the little bit of foam on a glass of champagne,” he said in tender admiration.
“Yes. I have to be light,” Grusinskaya answered gravely.
“I should like to look at you. May I turn on the light?”
“No, don’t,” she cried and moved her shoulder away. He felt now that he had alarmed this woman whose real age nobody knew. And again he was moved to simple pity. He nestled up to her and they lay still, and thought. The light of the street was reflected on the ceiling and hovered to and fro. It was narrow and pointed like a sword, for it came through a gap between the curtains. Whenever a car went by below a swift passing shadow swept across this shaft of light.
The pearls, thought Gaigern, are for the moment with the Devil. If I’m lucky and all goes well I can put them back in their case while she’s asleep. There’ll be an unholy row with my people when I return without them. If only the chauffeur doesn’t commit some outrageous folly, if only the beast doesn’t get drunk in his fury tonight and send us all to blazes. This business has failed completely. Where we are to get money from now, Heaven only knows. Perhaps the wealthy old fellow from the provinces who groans every night next door in Room No. 70 might be tapped. Oh well, the Devil take it, what’s the good of worrying? Perhaps I can simply ask her to give me the pearls. Perhaps I can simply tell her early tomorrow morning all about it. If I play my cards well, she won’t have me locked up in the morning, not she, the little crazy thing, as light as air. She leaves her pearls lying about unlocked! Funny little woman. I know her now. What does she care for pearls? She has done with everything, nothing matters to her anymore. If I hadn’t come, all would have been over for her by now. What use does she have for the pearls. She’ll give me the pearls. She is good, yes, as good as a mother, a little tiny mama whom one can sleep with.
Grusinskaya was thinking: The train for Prague leaves at 11:20. If only there’s no hitch! I let go of everything today and tomorrow there will be a muddle. Pimenov is too weak and the girls twist him round their fingers. But whoever misses the train tomorrow will get the sack, that’s positive. If Pimenov hasn’t troubled about the scenery tonight, it won’t be packed by tomorrow. The stagehands ought to be working overtime tonight. If I don’t see to everything myself, nothing gets done. Then there are Meyerheim’s accounts. Good God, however did I come to run away like that? Witte, he’ll leave his own head behind in the hotel if no one looks after him. They all rely on me, and this evening I wasn’t there. There will be a regular debacle. Lucille has only been waiting for the chance to make a row. Their names are never in large enough type on the posters. They’re never given a proper chance. But they never do a thing for themselves. If I don’t hold the whip over them, they go to pieces. They have made me short-tempered and conceited and tired. Heavens, how tired I was yesterday. How little was needed to show them where they would be without Grusinskaya. But now I am not a bit tired. I could get up and dance the whole program, or a new program, or a new dance. I must talk to Pimenov about it. A dance of dread, oh, I could dance that for you now. At first on one spot only and only a tremor, and then three circles en pointe, or no, not on the toes perhaps, perhaps something quite different.
But I am alive, I am alive, she thought with a shock. I shall dance new dances and I shall have success. A woman who is loved always has success. You left me starving—for nearly ten years now. That’s what it’s been. To think that a foolish boy who comes climbing in over the balcony can give one such strength. A spoilt child who knows nothing of love but the silly talk of girls.
She pulled up the bedclothes and covered Gaigern as if he were a little child. He murmured gratefully and nestled against her. Their bodies were intimate, but in their thoughts they went their own ways like strangers. All the lovers in the world lie thus—so close together, and so far apart.
It was the woman who first began to grope for the mysteries of the other’s soul. She took his head in her hands and held it as though it were a large and heavy fruit, gathered in the sun.
“I don’t even know your name, my friend,” she whispered in his ear.
“I am called Flix. In full Felix Amadei Benvenuto Freiherr von Gaigern. But you must christen me now. I want you to give me a name of your own.”
Grusinskaya reflected a moment, then she smiled softly.
“Your mother must have thought a lot of you when you came into the world to give you such beautiful names,” she said. “The fortunate. The beloved of God. The welcome one. Did you cry when you were christened?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Do you know, I have a child, too. A daughter. How old are you, Benvenuto?”
“Today I am seventeen again, for this is my first love affair. Otherwise, thirty” (he made himself out a little older than he was out of a touching consideration for the woman who was afraid of her age and who would not let him turn on the light). Nevertheless it hurt her. He might be the father of her eight-year-old grandson, Ponpon. She forced herself to think of something else.
“What were you like as a child? Very beautiful? Oh yes, I’m sure you were.”
“Quite enchanting. Covered with freckles and bruises and scratches and scrubby and dirty. We had Gypsies as grooms a
nd stable boys, like most people on the border where our estate lies. The Gypsy children were my friends. I got every sort of vermin and itch from them. When I think of my childhood I always smell stable manure. Then for a few years I was the terror of various schools. Then I was in the war for a bit. The war was fine. I felt at home in it. For all I cared it might have been a lot worse than it was. If there were to be another war, I’d be all right again.”
“Aren’t you all right now, you fire-eater? What do you do? What kind of a person are you?”
“And you? What kind of a woman are you? I have never known a woman like you. But you make me curious. I have a lot of questions to ask you. You are quite different.”
“I am only old-fashioned. I am from another world, another century,” Grusinskaya said and smiled in the darkness as she said it. Tears smarted in her eyes. “We dancers were brought up like little soldiers with iron discipline in the Imperial School of Ballet in Petersburg. We were little regiments of recruits for the beds of the Grand Dukes. It is said that those who grew too big when they were fifteen had steel rings fixed round their chests to prevent them growing any bigger. I was small and lean, but as hard as a diamond. Ambitious too. I had ambition in my blood like pepper and salt. Duty made a machine of me. There was nothing but work, work, work. No rest, no leisure, never a pause. And then, fame always brings loneliness. Success is as ice-cold and as lonely as the North Pole. And what it means to keep your grasp on success for three years, for five years, and twenty years, always on and on, but why do I tell you all this? Can you understand me? Listen. Often when you pass by a train signalman’s little house or drive in the evening through a small town, you see people sitting motionless in front of their doors with stupid faces and their big hands lying on their knees. You, too, are tired and you wish you too could simply sit with your hands lying before you. Well, try it, when you are famous, disappear from the world and take your rest, let others dance, leave it to those ugly, clumsy Germans and black women, and all the other incompetents, let them dance and you take your rest. No. You see, Benvenuto, it can’t be done. It’s impossible. You have the work, you curse it. But you can’t exist without it. Three days’ rest, and immediately you’re in a panic: I’m losing my form, I’m getting heavy, my technique is going to the Devil. You have to dance. It’s an obsession. There’s no drug, no morphine or cocaine and no vice in the world that’s as poisonous, as addictive as work and success. I can assure you of that. You have to dance, you have to dance. Besides, it’s important. If I give up dancing, believe me, there will not be a single person left in the world who can really dance at all. All the rest are dilettanti. But this hectic and hideously practical world of yours cannot get on without someone who can dance and who knows what dancing means. I learned from the celebrated dancers of my youth—Kchesinskaya, Trevilova—and they in their turn had it handed down from the great dancers of forty and sixty years ago. Often I feel when I dance that I am dancing to defy the whole world. You all shout ‘Today, today,’ and there you all sit, a theaterful of moneymakers, motorists and war-service men and shareholders, and there am I—just little Grusinskaya, no longer young, so tacky, a thing of yesterday, and all my steps have been known for two hundred years. And all the same I carry you away, and then you shout and weep, and laugh and go crazy for joy. And why? Isn’t it just for this bit of old-fashioned ballet? So, you see, it has its importance. Certainly, for nothing can be a world-success unless it is important, unless the world needs it. But everything else goes to pieces for it, nothing else remains whole. No man, no child, no feeling, nothing in life. You are a person no longer. Do you understand that? You are a woman no longer. You are nothing but an exhausted sense of responsibility chasing back and forth in the world. For one of our kind, life is over on the day when success comes to an end, on the day when we no longer believe in our own importance. Are you listening? Do you understand me?” Grusinskaya said beseechingly.
