“In myself,” said Therese. Her gray eyes shone with a strange light. “Just as others are biding in themselves. Nothing can touch us then. We shall keep our own candles burning, even though they kill us.”
She stood up. The old woman sat deep in her cynical and cryptic silence, the web of cunning thick over her shrivelled features.
“Even in Doomsday,” said Therese, with soft steadfastness, “we still have that one refuge: ourselves. No treachery, no faithlessness, no outrage, can penetrate there. Not even death.”
“Even death,” repeated Frau Reiner, hoarsely. She leaned forward a little, and her eyes were like searching daggers reaching to Therese’s face. “Even death?”
“Even death.”
The silence rang with pregnant meaning. The old woman’s clasped hands lay on her knee; her many jewels sparkled in the candlelight. She no longer grinned sardonically at Therese. When she spoke at last, it was with no jibe:
“Go, Therese. Karl will come back to you, now.”
She found Maria waiting for her at the end of the long wide hallway. Maria was sitting in an attitude of complete desolation in a tall, high-backed chair. Her elbow rested on an arm; her hand covered her face. Her whole large flabby body seemed collapsed together, as though her bones had softened. Above her head burned a single yellowish light, and by it, Therese saw that the other woman’s mass of hair was thickly streaked with gray.
She put her hand on Maria’s bulky shoulder. “I am ready to see Kurt now,” she said gently. Maria lifted her head. Her face was ravaged and exhausted. She rose without a word, and opened the door to her right.
The vast bedroom floated in gloom. Beside the bed one dim lamp burned. The windows were shrouded in silk and crimson velvet. The great bed, itself, was a shadowy white island in a dark sea. A nurse, stiff and starched, rose at the entrance of the ladies.
“Is he better?” whispered Maria, and her flabby face quivered.
“The Herr Professor is no worse,” answered the nurse. She smiled respectfully at Therese, who had approached the bed silently.
The nurse and Maria went into a whispered consultation, withdrawing a little. But Therese stood by the bed and looked down at its sleeping occupant. She was profoundly startled and shocked. She had been so shocked at her glimpse of Kurt in the University library. But today her shock was deeper, and more despairing. The face on the white pillow was the face of-a corpse, yellowed, emaciated, hollow and still. Like the face of the dead, it had a secret nobility and haughty peace, withdrawn and impassive. Approaching dissolution had ennobled and refined it, and for the first time Therese was aware of the great resemblance between Kurt and Karl. This might have been Karl’s own head, lying there so motionlessly, with its closed eyes sunken in webbed, empurpled shadows. The wide mouth, once so brutal, was now cold and stern and ascetic. His nose, once so blunt and thickened, was large and thin and chiselled. The hollows of the cheeks gave the whole face a contemplative and classic expression, as though behind the attenuated mask of flesh there were thoughts far removed from humanity and the world.
He hardly breathed. On his left temple there was a huge bruised spot, swollen and veined. She saw how one vein throbbed and leaped, as though with unbearable suffering. She had thought she had lost the capacity to feel horror, but horror, sharp and scalding, swamped her, made her mind reel with its impact. “No, no,” she whispered, aloud, as though to deny the ghastliness of some terrible evidence.
Her whisper seemed to arouse the dying man. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, his eyelids opened. His eyes, dim yet feverish, fixed themselves upon her. She bent over him, tears on her cheeks. “Kurt?” she murmured, and touched his forehead. He continued that mournful and fixed regard, as though not recognizing her. Maria crept to the other side of the bed. She looked at nothing but her husband, and her soul, imbedded though it had been in her gross flesh for so long, stood in her eyes.
Then the dry and shrunken lips moved. A pale light, like the reflection of a dying candle, passed over his face. “Karl?” he whispered, imploringly. He tried to move. His struggle was an awful thing to behold. He tried to move upward towards her. Veins, like purple ropes, sprang out on his thin neck. “Karl?” he said again, and this time the sound was a hoarse cry. A glisten of sweat broke out on his livid face. The nurse came to him, tried to force him back on his pillows. But he ignored her. The whole summoning of his dying body for strength resisted her efforts. He was drowning, and Therese was the only one who could rescue him.
She could not endure those hopeful, those crying eyes, those imploring and sunken eyes. She put her hand on his shoulder; it was like touching bare bone.
“He is coming, Kurt. He has been ill, but now he is better, and is coming to you soon.”
She spoke aloud, quietly and strongly. He continued to gaze at her; he panted shrilly.
“Kurt!” cried Maria in an anguished voice, approaching him.
But he saw no one but Therese. The two looked at each other in a quite dreadful silence. Between his opened lips Therese could see the glisten of his teeth, as he struggled for breath. His eyes burned in their distended sockets. She could see the dilated pupil, fevered and glowing.
Then slowly, he fell back on his pillows again. He smiled. It was like the grimace of a death’s-head. But there was peace in it.
“Yes, yes,” he whispered. “You do not lie to me, Therese.”
He closed his eyes. He seemed to sleep.
Therese led the weeping Maria from the room, her arm about her. The nurse followed them into the hall, and softly closed the door.
“Does no one know what is wrong?” asked Therese. “His physicians?”
The nurse shook her head significantly. “They say it is nothing physical. They do not know. It is his mind.…”
The pathetic mind of the innocent. Karl and Kurt. A whole nation of Karls and Kurts. Perhaps a whole world. Everywhere the innocent, deceived, bereft, betrayed, were dying.
Maria and Therese went downstairs together, blindly.
26
“I have given up hope,” said Maria, wiping her eyes and cheeks. “All I ask now is that he die in peace.”
“He will,” answered Therese, firmly. She felt exalted by her promise.
She was about to leave when she saw that there was a visitor, and though she wished nothing more fervently just then than to avoid him, she saw that it was impossible. The visitor was Captain von Keitsch. He was standing in the hall, and coversing with Alfred. Wilhelm stood nearby in silence.
“Ah, gnädige frau!” he exclaimed gallantly, at the sight of Therese descending the stairway. He took her hand with a flourish and kissed it, openly admiring her. “And how is Doctor Erlich?”
“Much better,” said Therese coldly, disengaging her hand as quickly as possible.
“And the good General? I have not seen him lately.”
Therese regarded him piercingly. She knew at once that he had heard about the poor General. Her heart swelled on a bitter tide. “He is well,” she said.
He saw her aversion. He paused. He smiled his warm smile.
“I am glad some one is well,” he remarked mockingly. He composed his face. He turned to Maria. “And how is the Herr Professor? I have heard he is ill, and, of course, had to come to ask about him.”
His large colorful face, his great bulky body, expressed his concern. His uniform fitted him perfectly, despite his mighty girth.
Maria, in spite of her grief, was flattered by the attention of the distinguished man. She even simpered a little, as she led the way into the drawing room, holding Therese’s reluctant arm.
“It is so kind of you, Baron,” she said. She sighed. “I wish I might say he is improving. But I cannot. No one seems to know what is the matter.”
“Too much confinement,” he suggested. “These scholarly men! They need air and exercise.”
“We are going in strongly for air and exercise these days, are we not?” asked Therese. “I have heard you deal out larg
e quantities of them in the concentration camps.”
If she thought to goad this detestable man, she was disappointed. He merely looked at her with a candid smile. “That is quite true, Frau Doctor. We do not overlook health facilities even for the enemies of the State.”
Her pale cheeks flushed with her angry agitation. She forced herself to turn her attention to her nephew, Alfred. “How are you, Alfred?” She shrank, for a few moments, from speaking to Wilhelm, so silent in his distant chair, so white-lipped and blindly preoccupied with his own thoughts.
“I am well, thank you, Aunt Therese.” He gave her his broad boyish grin. Then he became sober. “I wish I could say the same of my father.”
She studied his exuberant face, his firm round coloring. Then she had to turn to Wilhelm, and her voice was hesitant and gentle. “Wilhelm?”
He stirred. His lips moved, but no sound came from them. He turned his face towards her, but his eyes were empty and dull. Then, very slowly, his gaze left her and fixed itself upon von Keitsch. Instantly, and startlingly, his eyes were no longer blind, but vivid with an insane wild hatred. His lips drew back from his teeth in a soundless snarl. He leaned forward, as if to spring. Therese was aghast by the implication of what she saw. But no one else appeared to notice. Von Keitsch was murmuring to Maria, solicitously questioning her about Kurt. Alfred was bending forward, attentively and respectfully, towards his officer. Relieved that no one had caught Wilhelm’s naked look, Therese turned back to him furtively, his breath quick.
It was indeed Karl’s face, murderous and mad, convulsed with despair and hatred, and yet so mournfully pathetic. She must do something to distract his attention, before the others saw. She leaned towards him, willing him to look at her. “Wilhelm!” she called to him. “I have wanted to speak to you. Will you come to see me tomorrow?”
Her voice was like a hand, tugging at him. He turned his head stiffly towards her, and the blind and passive preoccupation was there again. He did not answer. She was sure he had not even heard her, but had responded mechanically.
“Will you come?” she repeated, and now her lips trembled with her grief and remorse.
He averted his head. He shivered violently. “No,” he answered hoarsely, dully. “I cannot come.” He looked at her, and deep within those suffering and tormented eyes a spark lighted. “I cannot come, again.”
She was silent. Something seemed to open wide in her chest, and bleed. It was too late. Too late for Wilhelm, now. But she forced herself to be calm.
“But I have a dear friend I should like you to know, Wilhelm,” she pleaded. “An old friend, Doctor Traub.”
The name caught von Keitsch’s attention. He turned to her alertly. “Doctor Traub? An old fat man? I have heard of him.” His tone was pleasant and noncommittal, but all at once a thrill ran through Therese, ominous and warning. “A gentleman of the old school,” added von Keitsch, lightly.
“A gentleman,” said Therese, and looked at him fully with her cold gray eyes.
Von Keitsch laughed lightly. “We have no need for gentlemen in Germany today. They are too apt to be obstructionists. The status quo is always their fetish. They do not know that there is a status quo no longer, that events move, that time moves, that the world moves. They refuse to face facts.”
“But facts can change, also,” said Therese, through chilled lips. “The fact of today is the exploded theory of tomorrow.”
Von Keitsch merely smiled, inclining his head. He was evidently enjoying himself. Loathing him, unable to endure his presence another moment, Therese rose and drew on her gloves. The Captain and Alfred rose, also, but Wilhelm was lost again in his awful dream and saw nothing, except his enemy.
“I should hate to see Germany become an exploded theory,” said Therese, regarding the Captain with her calm and bitter look.
He bowed. “I am sure you will not see it, dear lady,” he said.
“I am not so sure, Herr Captain. I am afraid you have given Germany a very bad repute in the world, and a very bad stench. The world does not like bad reputes and bad smells.”
“But the world already smells so bod, Frau Doctor!” he protested, laughing. “Did you think it was a rose-garden?”
She did not answer. She looked again at Wilhelm. But he was an image of intense hatred, fixed towards the Captain. Her heart sank with dread, and a sick premonition.
The early twilight was already closing in on the city. She was driven away. Again, she felt mortally ill and shaken. She could not go home! Not just yet, to that tomb, to that darkness, to that all-pervading atmosphere of waiting doom!
She gave orders that she be taken to the home of Doctor Traub.
27
“But first,” said Doctor Traub, after one thoughtful look at Therese, “you must dine with us. And I warn you, my child, that we shall converse of nothing more important than the weather.”
Therese had to laugh, in spite of the hot pain that heated her nerves. She thought: Why not? We can always resume the load of suffering. It is not bad to put it down for a little, and rest, and pretend it is not there. The eased shoulders and tortured muscles were made stronger by this, and the burden not so heavy.
She went to the old-fashioned wooden bathroom where she had washed her hands a thousand times when she had been a child. In this dusty dull mirror on the door she had seen her long pale-golden curls, her round cheeks, her thin young shoulders. She remembered how proud she had been when from time to time more and more of her figure could be seen in the glass, as she grew, until the day of her first long dress and her first up-coiled hair. Strange that it was always the inconsequential that one remembered through the years. She remembered how fascinated she was at seeing her full form in the glass; how she had pirouetted! She had said aloud, exultantly: “I am full-grown now!” Remembering this, Therese stood in deep silence, gazing at herself in the mirror, looking into her own eyes and seeing the shadowy hollows of her cheeks. She said aloud, as she had said that long-ago day: “I am full-grown, now.”
She bathed her face and hands, combed her hair. She was full of a mysterious peace. When she came downstairs, with a tranquil air, Doctor Traub looked at her and thought: My little girl has come to full stature. He was happy. He thought of how few human beings ever come to full stature, but must return to the mystery from which they had come almost as unformed as they had emerged. He could see the incomplete souls, like the clay and stone abandoned half-done by a sculptor. Here and there the vague outline of a face, or perhaps one awakened eye, or a shapeless body in which the living arms were still unformed. They were like embryos, still in the mother’s womb. The world was full of them, these embryos, painfully striving for form, or still sunken in semi-unconsciousness. Horrible thought, that the world was crowded with fetuses; unshaped, unconscious, in various processes of becoming, and animated only by the most primordial instincts of the fish and the crawling seaweed from which their life had sprung! It was a nightmare of horror, to think of it. He thought of the world as the womb in which the fetuses were forming—but how many of them never attained form! If one could look beyond the mere-seeming about him, he would go mad. Perhaps that was the secret of madness: the sudden ability to see.
He said to Therese: “Helene has a wonderful duck for dinner.” He added: “You were always so fond of duck, my dear.”
“I still am.” She bent and kissed his grizzled fat cheek.
The little house was lighted and warmed. The lamps hid the shabbiness of the furniture, the worn rugs. There was nothing but peace and love in the quiet, old-fashioned rooms. The clock did not toll tonight. It rang comfortingly, warmly. Autumn flowers were thrust thickly in a dozen mismatched containers. The mirrors reflected them, and reflected the newly lit fires. From the kitchen came the absurd and happy shrilling of a cuckoo clock. The table was already laid. The damask cloth, though patched and mended, was a sheet of stiff white satin on which the heavy old silver sparkled and shone in the lamplight. The whole house was full of the delicio
us and reassuring odors of duck and dressing, of hot cake and good coffee. It must be a gala occasion. One did not, in Germany, these days, assemble so many delightful foodstuffs at one and the same time.
Then she remembered. It was the doctor’s birthday. No wonder he had not been surprised to see her. He had expected her. And she had come empty-handed. He must know by now that she had forgotten.
She held his arm as they went to the dining room. “It is your birthday,” she said.
His old plump face brightened with childish pleasure. “So you remembered! I might have known that you would not forget, liebchen.”
Helene came in from the kitchen, wiping her hands, her apron flecked, as usual, with flour, her gray hair tumbled and wispy, her homely face flushed and smiling and damp, her manner flurried but affectionate, and her beautiful eyes, as always, shining, simple and tender.
“I knew you would not be late, Therese,” she said, kissing the other woman. “The duck is cooked to perfection.” She wiped her forehead unaffectedly on the back of her worn hand, and beamed with delight.
Therese fervently thanked chance for bringing her here tonight. She would have given disappointment and sadness to these two dear ones who loved her. Never had she so appreciated this love as she did now. Her chilled body was revived and comforted by it, made to feel safe by it. For it was unassailable.
The dinner was excellent. The sly little maid smiled egotistically at the praise of the doctor, though Helene, of course, had done the major part of the cooking. Therese, like all her kind, rarely noticed servants. But when she saw that foxy small face framed in yellow braids, she had a faint feeling of revulsion. I see specters everywhere, she admonished herself severely, and forgot the little maid, who most evidently did not like nor respect Helene, though she was goodness and kindness itself.
Time No Longer Page 29
