Therese could feel nothing. But she moaned over and over, automatically: “They have killed him. What good has this done? What good?”
The crowd was still petrified. Then, suddenly, the great black wall of the temple shivered, thundered. Slowly, horribly, it buckled, bent outward, and then, with a dull, earth-shaking crash, it fell. Its great loosened stones seemed to fly through the burning air. They fell, thundering and crashing, over the three bodies on the steps, burying them under tons of smoking debris. Behind them fell the mighty incandescent dome. Eruptions of renewed flame and smoke belched upwards. The heat was terrific.
Again, there was a sudden fateful silence, as though the multitudes had stopped breathing.
All at once that red silence was torn by a single savage, despairing, inhuman scream. In the midst of the throng there was a swaying, a bestial movement. Shrieking, the crowds tried to see, trampling each other. And when they saw, they screamed also, exultantly, despairingly, savagely. For the mob had turned upon the Storm Troopers. They had seized upon them. They were tearing them limb from limb. They were gouging and stamping and tearing. They foamed. They frothed. They stamped. From their throats came a horrible beastlike growling, as they worried the mangled fragments of the Troopers. The street had become an inferno, an arena, while wild animals twisted and devoured, in the midst of columns and clouds of crimson smoke and shooting sparks.
Hundreds, seized by primal fear, struggled and fought to run away. They poured into side streets, fleeing like frenzied animals. The thunder of pounding feet enhanced the frightful confusion. There was a shrill whistling, and scores of Troopers and police fell upon the mob, shooting, beating, stamping. The masses were now in full flight.
Behind them, the fire smoldered like a vast funeral pyre. The funeral pyre of mankind.
30
A brown leaf, flecked with gold, flew up into the dull air, caught a wan gleam of sunlight, fluttered down. There was another leaf, and another. The wind sighed restlessly, as though bored with the sad sport. The pale far sky seemed formed of the very essence of silence, filtering it down upon the earth.
Therese watched the fluttering of the leaves, gazed at the sky emptily. She willed herself not to think. In these days, one dared not to think. If one thought, madness came, and overwhelming despair, and the bitterest and most inconsolable grief. She forced herself to be very quiet, to go about the days serenely and calmly, like a robot without emotion or sorrows. When the hot anguish rose up in her like a fire, she would say to herself sternly: “Tomorrow. But not today. There is too much to be done.”
She forced herself to be absorbed in the most inconsequential things. And so she watched the leaves, compelling her thoughts to rise and flutter aimlessly with them, until she had hypnotized herself into unthinkingness.
When she was able to control herself, she dressed, drew on her gloves, adjusted her hat. She passed her husband’s room. She knew he paced most of the night, every night, and only slept at dawn. She did not glance at his door. She felt that he was dead, that he would never rise again, and that he was no longer part of her life. The closed door was shut on emptiness.
Lotte was dusting the hall below when she saw Therese descending the stairs. “Good morning, gnädige frau. But are you having breakfast?”
“No, Lotte. I do not feel like it.”
Lotte gazed with anxious shrewdness at Therese’s pale strained face. “Not even a cup of coffee?” She sighed. “The Herr Doctor did not sleep until an hour ago. He wanders from room to room, searching. He asks me: ‘Have you seen him yet, Lotte?’” She shook her head. “It is too terrible to see.”
Therese’s face remained coldly indifferent. Lotte resented such heartlessness. “He has been ill, Lotte. You must not attach too much importance to his ramblings.”
She went out into the cool smoky autumn morning. She walked through the quiet morning streets. Servant girls were scrubbing doorsteps and washing windows. Their uncultured flat voices were the only sound in the stillness, and the scraping of their chairs and pails. Late autumn flowers bloomed on window-sills, and behind the sleeping houses lay old gardens, drowned in misty light. Sparrows fluttered across Therese’s path, the pale sun on their gray wings. Chimney pots smoked. There had been a rain last night, and the old roofs shimmered with a dim wet silvery patina.
Therese proceeded calmly, as though with purpose. It was not far to Doctor Traub’s house. She saw the little maid washing the steps. The girl stared as Therese came up; she held her mop in her hand, standing in the midst of a froth of wet soapsuds, blinking.
“Is the Frau Doctor up yet?” asked Therese.
The girl curtseyed. “Yes, gnädige frau. She is up early. She is drinking her coffee.”
Therese went into the house. It was cool and fresh and dusky in the hall. The old clock chimed eight. Fingers of colorless sunlight streaked the frayed rugs and polished floor. Therese went into the morning-room. Frau Traub was sipping coffee near a bright window.
“Good morning, Helene,” said Therese, casually, smiling. “Do you mind if I join you, and drink a cup of coffee?”
“No, Therese, my dear. The coffee is fresh and hot. But it is very bad, I am afraid.”
Frau Traub smiled gently. She reached for another cup and poured it full of steaming brown liquid. She had become very old. Her hair was almost white. Her face had shrunken to half its usual size, and was wrinkled and gray. But her beautiful kind eyes were steadfast behind their spectacles. Her hands did not tremble. Glancing up, an expression of concern for Therese changed her smile. But she made no comment.
Therese sat down and removed her gloves. She sipped the coffee. Only then was she conscious of her faintness and exhaustion. But she kept her voice matter-of-fact. “Your train leaves at ten, Helene? I have come to go to the station with you, of course.”
Helene’s face took on a look of apprehension. She glanced swiftly at the door. Then she leaned towards Therese. “My dear, do you think it is wise? For you?”
“Why not?”
Helene did not answer. Her smile did not appear again. She was old, and sick, and full of sorrow. The two women finished their coffee in silence.
The little maid furtively passed the door, seemingly intent on her work. Therese raised her voice: “And do not forget, Helene, to give my dearest love to the doctor. And please tell him not to keep you and himself too long in Berne. Of course, he must not return until he is completely rested. But you ought to be back before Christmas?”
Helene drew in a deep sighing breath. “Oh, long before Christmas, Therese!” The two women exhausted a desolate look. “I shall write you, Therese, but you must forgive us if we are not good correspondents.”
Therese forced herself to laugh.
Helene went on, pretending animation: “I heard from him, yesterday. He is very impatient, because I have delayed joining him for so long. But I thought it best for him to be alone a little while. He is so very tired.”
“Yes,” murmured Therese, “he was so very tired. We ought to be glad he is—resting, now.” She added, quickly, as though to quell some inner torment: “You ought to be happy in Berne, Helene. Are you not often homesick for Switzerland?”
Helene smiled piteously. “At times. But I have many relatives there. We intend to stay with them, of course.”
They went upstairs together. Helene walked haltingly, her step like that of a very old woman’s. Therese closed the door quickly behind her. Helene turned to her. Her lips opened, and there were tears in her eyes. Then she pressed her mouth tightly together, and turned to her open trunk and cases. Therese helped her pack, in silence. Only at the last did Helene finally turn to her as though to speak, eagerly, despairingly. At this, Therese put her hand firmly over the other’s mouth and shook her head warningly.
The little maid tapped at the door, and Helene, forcing her face to serenity, opened it.
“Ah, yes, child,” she said. “I am going now. You have called my cab? Thank you. You will rememb
er, after you have finished, to take the keys to Frau Doctor Erlich? And here is an envelope for you. It contains two months’ wages. I will let you know in plenty of time, so you can prepare the house for our return.”
The girl curtseyed briefly. She regarded Helene inquisitively. But she only said in her high peasant’s voice: “A day’s notice is all that I require, Frau Doctor. I wish I were going with you to Switzerland.”
Helene smiled gently. “Yes, it is a beautiful place, child. I was born there. The doctor, I hope, will entirely recover his health.”
She closed the door softly. She went to her dresser and put on her old shapeless hat and black cotton gloves. Therese could see how her hands trembled, in the mirror. But her homely wrinkled face was without expression, except that of sternness and utter stillness.
Only at the last did this stillness break, and that was at the moment of leaving the large old-fashioned bedroom. She stood beside the great empty canopied bed. She was like one who gazes down, speechless, at a corpse. Here she had lain with her husband for nearly fifty years. Here, she would lie with him no longer. No, never again would she lie with him. Her white head was bent, her gloved hands folded as though she prayed. Tear after tear stole down through the furrows of her old face. But there was no breaking in her, no lessening of fortitude and courage.
She looked about the room again, steadfastly. “Good-bye, good-bye,” she whispered. Her face wrinkled and worked. Then she smiled, and at that smile, Therese was forced to turn again. “Good-bye, my darling, my dear,” whispered Helene.
She gazed through the window at her beloved tangled old garden, which she was leaving forever. She gazed earnestly, as though searching for some one. There were the bending ancient trees, crowned with misty light, and the high thick grass. She looked at the old red-brick wall, upon which sparrows were warming themselves in the last warmth of the year. The air was full of their cheeping. “Good-bye,” said Helene. She put her hand to her lips and blew a kiss to the garden.
“Let us go. It is late,” said Therese, who could not bear any more. Her will kept her body rigid and her voice composed.
She helped Helene down the stairway. The older woman walked blindly, stumbling. Two men went upstairs to take the luggage. The little maid stood by the door, blinking slyly, and curtseying. The two ladies entered the cab, and Therese briefly gave directions. Then they sat in silence. Therese did not touch Helene. She dared not invite either her own or Helene’s collapse. She stared sightlessly through the windows, watched the streets roll by. Crowds on the way to work now filled the streets, comfortable bourgeoisie hurrying to catch their busses. The tops of the buildings shimmered with brightened sunlight. The city hummed and murmured.
They passed a small wooded park. It was too early for children and their nursemaids. Therese tapped on the glass, and the man brought his cab to a stop. “We wish to walk a few moments,” Therese said. “Wait for us.”
She and Helene left the cab, walked into the park, and sat down. They were all alone. The golden and scarlet autumn trees were drenched in cataracts of awakened light. Birds and squirrels ran over the grass. For a long time the two women sat in silence, watching the little animals. The sunlight flickered on their pale drawn faces.
Then Therese spoke, very quietly: “Helene, I have a cheque for you. My Paris bank has transferred funds for you to its bank in Berne. If you need more at any time, you shall have it.”
“Thank you, Therese,” responded the other woman, as quietly. “But my relatives are quite wealthy. I shall remain with them.”
“Nevertheless, even among wealthy relatives, one is more welcome if one is independent. Whatever I have is yours.”
“But, Therese, you—you may need it yourself, if you and Karl decide to leave—”
Therese looked at the sky as the dead look, sightlessly. “We shall never leave, Helene.”
Again they were silent. They clung desperately to their last moments together, so much unspoken between them, of which they dared not speak.
Then suddenly, terribly, Therese’s composure broke. She burst into broken sobs. She bent her head. Her tears spilled down her cheeks. She could not control herself. Her sobs wrenched her throat. Her hat fell off, and her gray-streaked fair hair shone in the sunlight. She abandoned herself to her everwhelming grief and anguish.
“Oh why, oh why, did he do it? What good did it do? What good could it do?” She clenched her bands together in the access of her suffering. “He died for nothing, nothing at all! And now, I have no one in all the world!” Her voice, shattered and smothered, startled the birds and the squirrels, and they scurried away.
Helene did not weep. She put her arms about Therese, and drew her head to her broad flat breast. She held her as a mother holds a child. “Hush, hush, my darling. Therese, will you listen to me, just a moment? Hush, my child. You must listen. I have such a little time. I must talk to you, as we have never talked before since—since he had to go away.”
Therese still wept, brokenly, but more quietly. Helene lifted her face to the sky, but her features shone with a brighter and more steadfast light, calm and unshaken. Her eyes were full of the splendor of faith. She smiled, and her smile was sweet and gentle.
“He did not die for nothing, Therese. Some few, perhaps only a handful, in that mob heard him. Only a few. But that is enough. Only a few awakened, only a few made to listen, and see, and understand. But it is still enough. Do you not see? They will make others, many many others, listen and see and understand. His voice, and the voices like his, will be heard. He must have known that. He must have been so happy, knowing it. Do you not understand, Therese?”
Therese lifted her tear-wet haggard face. She looked at Helene, saw her sweet serene smile, her faith-lit eyes.
“Yes,” she whispered, after a long while. “Yes, I understand. He used to speak to me of this. But I did not understand, then. Now, I know.”
Helene said: “When men like him die, they do not die in vain. It is only when they run away, that other men are lost.”
She lifted her head again, and gazed at the sky, the light brighter on her old wrinkled face.
She held Therese more closely, and kissed her wet cheek. “Therese, you know I have to go. You know that Felix never carried any identification with him, knowing that this must happen to him sometime. You know they are still trying to find out who he was. If they do, then they will be able to trace back, and finally they will find the others who worked with him. Felix once told me that if—if he died like this, I must go away. Immediately. For the sake of the other workers. And that is why, as you know, I have had to pretend he is in Switzerland and that I am joining him. You do not know what I have endured these last days, Therese, while waiting for my passport! I thought that at any hour they would come, and say: ‘It was your husband who created a riot that night, and we have come to question you, and trace those behind him. We have suspected for a long time that he was engaged in treason.’ Therese, you cannot understand what I have endured, forcing myself to show no emotion, no grief, no loneliness! And with that girl watching me every moment. It has been so frightful.” But there was no expression of what she had endured in her gentle, smiling face. “And I have had to pretend he is still alive, waiting for me to join him in Switzerland, for a holiday!”
She pressed Therese’s hand. “You told me he gave you a certain name. Do not forget it, Therese. You keep it in trust for Karl.”
Therese shook her head despairingly. “That is hopeless. Karl is dead.”
“No, no, my dear. He is not dead. He will come back. Then you will stand with him, as I stood with Felix. You will understand everything then.”
Therese gazed at her through her tears. She saw Helene’s courage and gentleness, faith and sweetness. Then Helene said softly:
“I am not so unhappy. I have my memories. And I know that some day, perhaps very soon, I shall see him again. I only hope he will let me work with him once more. For he must still be working.”
“Have faith, have courage, my child. These things are the only hope for the world. You dare not forget them.”
Therese put her hat on her head, rearranged her hair. Then she lifted Helene’s hand to her lips and kissed it with her trembling lips.
“I shall not forget.”
They returned to the cab, and drove away to the station.
31
Therese struggled with her sorrow, which be-became worse and more unendurable as the long silent days passed. She remembered what Helene had told her. She wept no longer for Felix Traub. She wept for herself. She had no one. Her house was a graveyard. The streets were the corridors of the dead, where an unreal and spectral life went on, without substance. She immured herself. She refused to answer any calls, or pay any visits. A pall of heavy mist appeared to float through all the rooms of her house, in which every sound was muffled. For hours on end she would sit alone in her room, lips and eyes as dry as paper, staring blankly before her. “The poor Frau Doctor suffers so about the Herr Doctor,” said Lotte compassionately to her kitchen assistant. “It is worse, rather than better.”
But Therese was not suffering because of Karl. Her grief was too great. She almost forgot him. Sometimes, subconsciously, she heard his pacing, heard his ghostly sighs behind his doors. But these things did not enter into the still black solitude where she crouched, mourning and stricken.
She was not a weak woman. Grief and adversity did not dissolve her in a warm flood. She hardened in it, became more resolute. And so it was that on a certain day, near Christmas, she felt a hard blade of hatred push through the heavy clay of her sorrow.
She began to hate Karl. Not suddenly, not with an explosive burst, but with a bitter and sullen thrusting upward from the depths of her misery. She began to hate him, for he had come to represent all Germany to her, the Germany which had killed Doctor Traub, Gerda, Eric and Henri Cot, which had fired synagogues and churches, which had beaten down the helpless and defenseless, and which had begun to poison all the earth with hatred, force and violence.
Time No Longer Page 32
