Part 48

He did not go home for luncheon; he ate in the café at the Carthusian Gate. Then he took a long walk out over the fields and meadows. It had stopped raining, and the brisk wind refreshed him. He stood for a long while on the banks of the canal, and watched some men piling bricks at a brick-kiln. From time to time he took a piece of paper from his pocket, and wrote something on it with his pencil: it was notes.

Once he wrote alongside of a motif: “Farewell, my music!” His eyes were filled with dreadful tears.

He returned to the city just as the sun was setting; it looked like a huge ball of fire in the west. The sky shone out between two great black clouds like the forge of a smithy. He could not help but think of Eleanore.

He entered his living room, and paced back and forth. Philippina came in, and asked him whether she should warm up his soup for him. Her unnatural, singing tone attracted his attention; he looked at her very closely.

“Where is my wife?” he asked.

Philippina’s face betrayed an abysmally mean smile, but she never said a word.

“Where is my wife?” he asked a second time, after a pause.

Philippina’s smile became brighter. “Is it cold out?” she asked, and in a moment she had left the room. Daniel stared at her as if he feared she had lost her mind. In a few minutes she came back. In the meantime she had put on a cloak that was much too short for her, and beneath which the loud, freakish skirt of her checkered dress could be seen.

“Daniel, come along with me,” she said in an anxious voice. To Daniel her voice sounded mysterious and fearful. “Come along with me, Daniel! I want to show you something.”

He turned pale, put on his hat, and followed her. They crossed the square in silence, went through Binder Street, Town Hall Street, and across the Market. Daniel stopped. “What are you up to?” he asked with a hoarse voice.

“Come along! You’ll see,” whispered Philippina.

They walked on, crossed the Meat Bridge, went through Kaiser Street and the White Tower to St. James’s Place. Some people looked at the odd couple in amazement. When they reached Frau Hadebusch’s little house, it was dark. “Listen, Philippina, are you ever going to talk?” said Daniel, gritting his teeth.

“Psh!” Philippina knew what she was doing. She put her mouth to Daniel’s ear, and whispered: “Go up two flights, quick, you know the house, bang on the door, and if it’s locked, bust it in. In the meantime I’ll go to Frau Hadebusch so that she can’t interfere.”

Then Daniel understood.

VII

Everything became blood-red before his eyes; he was seized with a feverish chill.

He had followed Philippina with a dejected, limp feeling of disgust, fear and coercion. Now he knew what it was all about. At the very beginning of the events he saw the middle and the end. He saw before the bolted door what was going on behind it. His soul was seized with horror, rage, woe, contempt, and terror. He felt dizzy; he feared lie might lose consciousness.

He sprang up the creaking stairs by leaps and bounds. He stood before the door behind which he had gone hungry, been cold, and glowed with enthusiasm as a young man. Silence should have reigned there now, so that the devotion of retrospective spirits might not be molested on the grave of so many, many hopes.

He jerked at the latch; a scream was heard from within. The door was bolted. He pressed his body against the fragile wood so violently that both hinges, and the latch, gave way, and the door fell on to the middle of the floor with a mighty crash.

The scream was repeated, this time in a more piercing tone. Dorothea was lying on a big bed with nothing on but a flimsy chemise. Frau Hadebusch, pimp always, had rented the bed from a second-hand dealer; it covered a half of the room. Before Dorothea was a plate of cherries; she had been amusing herself by shooting the pits at her lover. He likewise was lacking nearly all the garments ordinarily worn by men when in the presence of women. He was sitting astride on a chair, smoking a short-stemmed pipe.

When Daniel, with bloody hands—he had scratched himself while breaking in the door—with his hair flying wild about his face, panting, and pale as death, stepped over the door, Dorothea again began to scream; she screamed seven or eight times. She was filled with despair and terrible anxiety.

Daniel rushed at the young man, and seized him by the throat. While he held the American in a death-like grip, while he saw Dorothea, as if in a roseate haze, with uplifted arms, leave the bed screaming at the top of her voice, while an extraordinary power of observation, despite his insane rage, came over him, while he watched the cherries as they rolled across the bed and saw the green stems, some of which were withered, showing that the cherries were half rotten, while he felt a taste on his tongue as if he too had eaten cherries—while he saw all these things and had this sensation, he thought to himself without either doubt or relief: “This is the downfall; this is chaos.”

The American—it later became known that he was a wandering artist who had, with an equal amount of nerve and adroitness, worked his way into the private social life of the city—thrust his antagonist back with all his might, and struck up the position of a professional boxer. Daniel, however, gave him no time to strike; he fell on him, wrapped his arms tight about him, threw him to the floor, and was trying to choke him. He groaned, struggled, got his fist loose, struck Daniel in the face, and cried, “You damned fool!” But it was the cry of a whipped man.

Loud noise broke out downstairs. A crowd of people collected on the sidewalk. “Police, police!” shrieked the shrill voice of a woman. The people began to make their way up the stairs.

“Oh, oh, oh!” moaned Dorothea. In half a minute she had her dress on. “Out of this place and away,” she said, as she looked for her gloves and umbrella.

Frau Hadebusch appeared in the hall, wringing her hands. Behind her stood Philippina. Two men forced their way in, ran up to Daniel and the American, and tried to separate them. But they had bitten into each other like two mad dogs; and it was necessary to call for help. A soldier and the milkman gave a hand; and finally two policemen appeared on the scene.

“I must go home,” cried Dorothea, while the other women shrieked and carried on. “I must go home, and get my things and leave.”

With the face of one possessed and at the same time dumb, Philippina stole out from among the excited crowd and followed Dorothea. She did not feel that she was walking; she could not feel the pavement under her feet; she was unconscious of the air. That wild inspiration returned to her which she had experienced once before in her life—the time she went up in the attic and saw Gertrude’s lifeless body hanging from a rafter.

Her veins pulsed with a hot lust for destruction. “Swing the torch!” That was the cry she heard running through her brain. “Swing the torch!” But she wanted to do something much more pretentious this time than merely start a fire in some rubbish. The farther she went the more rapidly she walked. Finally she began to run and sing with a loud, coarse voice. Her cloak was not buttoned; it flew in the air. The people who saw her stopped and looked at her, amazed.

VIII

Herr Carovius and Jordan were sitting in the Paradise Café.

“How things change, and how everything clears up and straightens out!” remarked Jordan.

“Yes, the open graves are gaping again,” said Herr Carovius cynically.

“So far as I am concerned,” continued Jordan, without noticing the aversion his affability had aroused in Herr Carovius, “I can now face death with perfect peace of mind. My mission is ended; my work is done.”

“That sounds as if you had discovered the philosopher’s stone,” remarked Herr Carovius sarcastically.

“Perhaps,” replied Jordan gently and bent over the table. “You are after all not entirely wrong, my honoured friend. Do you wish to be convinced? Will you honour me with a visit?”

Herr Carovius had become curious. They paid their bills and left for Ægydius Place.

Having entered Jordan’s room, the old man lighted a lamp and bolted the door. He then opened the door of the great cabinet by the wall, and took out a big doll. It was dressed like a Swiss maid, had on a flowered skirt, a linen waist, and a little pink apron. Its yellow hair was done up in braids, and on its head was a little felt hat.

“All that is my handiwork,” said Jordan, with much show of pride. “I myself took all the measurements and made the clothes, including even the shoes. And now watch, my dear friend.”

He placed the doll in the middle of the room. “She will speak,” he continued, his face radiant with joy, “she will sing. She will sing a song native to her beloved Tyrol. Will you be so good as to take this chair? I would rather not have you so close to it, if I may, for there are certain noises which I still have to correct. The illusion is stronger when you are some distance away.”

He crouched down behind the doll, did something at its back, and the buzzing of wheels became audible. The old man then stepped out to the front of the doll, and said: “Now, my little girl, let’s hear what you can do!”

An uncanny, hoarse, somewhat cooing voice rang out from the body of the doll. It sounded like the vibrations of metallic strings accompanied by the low tones of a water whistle. If you closed your eyes, you could at least imagine you were hearing a song sung by some one in the distance. But if you looked at the thing closely with its lifeless, mask-like kindly, waxen face, and heard the shrill, muffled sounds, without either articulation or rhythm, coming from within, it took on a ghostly aspect. Herr Carovius in fact felt a cold chill creep down his back.

When the machine ran down, the doll’s eyelids and lips closed. Jordan was looking at Herr Carovius in great suspense. “Well, what do you think of it?” he asked. “Be quite frank; I can stand any amount of criticism.”

Herr Carovius had great difficulty to keep from bursting out laughing. His mouth and chin itched. Suddenly, however, scorn and contempt left him; he fell into a disagreeably serious frame of mind, and a softness, a mildness such as he had not felt since time immemorial stole over his heart. He said: “That is a perfectly splendid invention! Perfectly splendid! Though it does need some improvement.”

Jordan nodded zealously and with joyous approval. He was on the point of going into a detailed description of the mechanism and its artistic construction, when the two men heard a strange noise in the adjoining room. They stopped and listened. They could hear some one moving the furniture; there were steps back and forth; they heard a hammering and pounding as if some one were trying to open a box. This was followed by a sound that resembled the falling of paper on the floor; it lasted for some time, bunch apparently following bunch. Listen! Some one is talking in an abusive voice! What’s that? A gruesome, sing-song voice repeating unintelligible words: “I-oi! huh, huh! I-oi, huh-huh!” There is a sound as if of crackling fire. The flames cannot be seen; but they can be heard!

Old Jordan jerked the door open, and cried like a child.

Philippina was standing in the midst of a pile of burning papers. She had forced Daniel’s trunk open, thrown every one of his scores on the floor, and set them on fire. She was a fearful object to behold. Her hair hung down loose and straggly over her shoulders, she was swinging her arms as if she were working a pump-handle, and from her mouth poured forth a volley of loud, babbling, gurgling tones that bore not the faintest resemblance to anything human. Her face, lightened by the flames, was coloured with the trace of fearful voluptuousness. Herr Carovius and old Jordan stood in the doorway as if paralysed. Seeing them, she began to hop about, and stretched out her upraised arms to the flames, which were leaping higher and higher.

Herr Carovius, awakening from his torpidity, saw that it was high time to make some effort to escape. Shielding his face with his hands, he fled as fast as his feet could carry him to the hall door and down the steps. Tears were gushing down Jordan’s cheeks; fear had made it impossible for him to reflect. He ran back into his room, opened the window, and called out to the people on the square. Then he chanced to think of his beloved doll. He rushed up to it and took it under his arm. But when he tried to leave the room, the smoke blew into his face, benumbing and burning him. He staggered, reached the top of the stairs, made a misstep, fell headlong down the steps, still holding the doll in convulsive embrace, twitched a few times, and then lay lifeless on the hall floor.

Heart failure had put an end to his life.

Dorothea, who had been in the house packing her things, hastened, luggage in hand, past the corpse. Her face was ashen; she never looked at the dead body of Inspector Jordan. She was soon lost in the crowd of excited people. She had vanished.

IX

The police had at last separated Daniel and the American in Frau Hadebusch’s house. Daniel fell on a chair, and gazed stupidly into space. Frau Hadebusch brought him some water. The American put on his clothes, while the spectators looked on and laughed.

The two men were then taken to the police station, where the lieutenant in charge took such depositions as were necessary for court action. Daniel saw a gas lamp, a quill pen, several grinning faces, his own bloody hand, and nothing more. The American was held in order to protect him from further attacks; Daniel was released. He heard the young man tell his story in a mangled German and with a voice that was nearly choked with rage, but did not absorb anything he said.

He heard a dog bark, a wagon rattle, a bell strike; he heard people talking, murmuring, crying; he heard the scraping of feet. But it all sounded to him like noises that were reaching his ears through the walls of a prison. He went on his way; his gait was unsteady.

As he reached the Church of Our Lady, Daniel turned to the right toward the Market Place, and saw the Goose Man standing before him.

“Go home,” the Goose Man seemed to say with a sad voice. “Go home!”

“Who are you? what do you wish of me?” A voice within him asked. But then it seemed that the figure had become invisible, and that it could not be seen again until it was far off in the distance, where it was being shone upon by a bright light.

People were running across Ægydius Place; some of them were crying “Fire!” Daniel turned the corner; he could see his house. Flames were leaping up behind his window. He pressed his hands to his temples, and, with eyes wide open and filled with terror, he forced his way through the crowd up to his house. “For God’s sake, for Heaven’s sake!” he cried, “save my trunk!”

Many looked at him. A figure appeared at the window; many arms were pointed at it. “The woman! Look, look, the woman!” came a cry from the crowd. And then again: “She has set the house on fire! She has swung the torch and started the fire!”

Daniel rushed into his house. Firemen overtook him. There he saw in the hall, lighted by the lanterns being carried back and forth so swiftly, and placed in the corner with no more care or consideration than was possible under such circumstances, the dead body of old Jordan. His body, and close beside it, as if in supernatural mockery of all things human, the doll, the Swiss maid with the machine in her stomach. Sighing and sobbing, he fell down; his forehead touched the dead hand of the old man.

As if in a dream he heard the hissing of the hoses, the commands, the hurried running back and forth of the firemen. Then he felt as if a shadow, a figure from the lower world, suddenly rose before him. A clenched fist, he thought, opened and hurled shreds of paper into his face. When he looked up he could see nothing but the firemen rushing around him. The shadow, the figure, had pushed its way in among them, and in the confusion no one had paid any attention to it.

With an absent-minded gesture, Daniel reached out and picked up the paper that was lying nearest him. It had fallen on the face of the doll. He unfolded it and saw, written in his own hand, the music to the “Harzreise im Winter.” Under the notes were the words:

But aside, who is it? His path in the bushes is lost, Behind him rustle The thickets together, The grass rises again, The desert conceals him.

The melody and rhythm that interpreted the words were of a grandiose gloominess, like a song of shades pursued in the night, across the sea. Daniel recalled the hour he had written this music; he recalled the expression on Gertrude’s face the time he played it for her. Eleanore was there, too, wearing a white dress, with a myrtle wreath in her hair. The tones dissolved the web of infinite time. “But aside, who is it?” came forth like a great, deep dirge. In the question there was something prophetically great. He covered his face and wept; he felt as if his heart would break.

The dead man and the doll were lying there, motionless, lifeless.

In half an hour the fire was under control. The two attic rooms had been burned out completely. Further than this no damage had been done.

Philippina had vanished without a trace. Since no one had seen her leave the house, the first theory was that she had been burned to death. But investigation proved this assumption to be incorrect. The police looked for her everywhere, but in vain; she was not to be found. A few people who had known her rather intimately insisted that she had been burned up so completely that there was nothing left of her but a little pile of black ashes.

However this may be, and whatever the truth may be, Philippina never again entered the house. No one ever again saw or heard a thing of her.

BUT ASIDE, WHO IS IT?

I

Late in the evening Benda came. He had been tolerably well informed of everything that had taken place. In the hall he met Agnes. Though generally quite monosyllabic, Agnes was now inclined to be extremely communicative, but she could merely confirm what he had already heard.

She went up to the top floor with him, and he stood there for a long while looking at the burnt rooms. There were two firemen on guard duty. “All of his music has been burnt up,” said Agnes. Benda thought he would hardly be able to talk with his old friend again after this tragedy. But he at once felt ashamed of his timidity, and went down to see him.

It was again quiet throughout the entire house.

Daniel had lighted a candle in the living room. Finding it too dark with only one candle, he lighted another.

He paced back and forth. The room seemed too small for him: he opened the door leading into Dorothea’s room, and walked back and forth through it too. On entering the dark room, his lips would move; he would murmur something. When he returned to the lighted room, he would stand for a second or two and stare at the candles.

His features seemed to show traces of human suffering such as no man had borne before; it could hardly have been greater. He did not seem to notice Benda when he came in.

“Everything gone? Everything destroyed?” asked Benda, after he had watched Daniel walk back and forth for nearly a quarter of an hour.

“One grave after the other,” murmured Daniel, in a voice that no longer seemed to be his own. He raised his head as if surprised at the sound of what he himself had said. He felt that a stranger had come into the room without letting himself be heard.

“And the last work, the great work of which you told me, the fruit of so many years, has it also been destroyed?” asked Benda.

“Everything,” replied Daniel distractedly, “everything I have created in the way of music from the time I first had reason to believe in myself. The sonatas, the songs, the quartette, the psalm, the ‘Harzreise,’ ‘Wanderers Sturmlied,’ and the symphony, everything down to the last page and the last note.”

Yes, there was a stranger there; you could hear him laughing quietly to himself. “Why do you laugh?” asked Daniel sternly, and adjusted his glasses.

Benda, terrified, said: “I did not laugh.”

“The grass rises again, the desert conceals him,” said the stranger. He wore an old-fashioned suit, a droll sort of cap, and Hessian boots. “I ought to know him,” thought Daniel to himself, and began to meditate with cloudy mind.

“This is like murder, unheard-of murder,” cried Benda’s soul; “how can he bear it? What will he do?”

“What is there to do?” asked Daniel, expressing Benda’s silent thought in audible words, and looking askew, as he walked back and forth, at the stranger who went slowly through the room over to the window in the corner. “What can human fancy find reasonable or possible after all that has happened? Nothing! Merely pine away; pine away in insanity.”

“Oho,” said the stranger, “that is a trifle strong.”

“If he would only keep quiet,” thought Daniel, tortured. “I presume you know what has happened with the woman whom I called my wife,” he continued. “That I threw myself away on this vain, soulless spirit of a mirror is irrelevant. Greater men than I have walked into such nets and become entangled, ensnared. I have never cherished the delusion that I was immune to all the mockery of this earth. I believed, however, that I could scent out truth and falsehood, and differentiate the one from the other, just as the hand can tell by the feel the wet from the dry. But the connection of the one with the other, and the horrible necessity of this connection, I do not understand.”

“You have been served just right,” remarked the intruder with the Hessian boots. He had sat down on a chair in the corner, and looked quite friendly.

“Why?” roared Daniel, stopping.

Benda, astounded, rose to his feet. “Speak out, Daniel,” he said affectionately, “unburden your soul!”