Part 24

The women in the hall had noticed that something strange and fearful was taking place in Karen’s room. The struggle between mother and daughter had not lasted long enough to give them a chance to make a decision or fight down their fear of the old woman. But they received Christian with frightened faces and pointed toward the door. They wanted to follow him into the room; but since he paid no attention to them and closed the door behind him, they remained where they were and listened. But they heard no sound.

Christian approached Karen’s bed. He had taken in what was happening. Silently he took the pearls from the old woman’s hands. Wrought up and inflamed by greed as she was, she did not dare make a gesture of resistance. On his face there was an expression which beat down her boiling rage at his interference. It was a strange expression--a lordly mournfulness was in it, a proud absorption, a smile that was remote, a something estranged and penetrating and inviolable. He laid the pearls upon Karen’s breast, and took both of her hands into his. She looked up to him--relieved, redeemed. Her body quivered in convulsions, but was eased as he held her hands. Freezing and icy under the touch of death, she thrust herself nearer to him, babbling, moaning, trembling in every limb, and with a hot moisture in her eyes. And he did not recoil. He did not feel any repulsion at the malodorousness of the dripping sores. That smile still on his face, he embraced her and gave her a last warmth against his breast, as though she were a little bird whom the storm had blown hither. At last she lay very quiet, without motion or sound.

And thus she died in his arms.

IX

Broken by his wild dissipations, Felix Imhof had to halt at last. His strength was at an end.

He summoned physicians, and with a smile begged for the truth. The last whom he consulted, a famous specialist, bade him be prepared for the worst, since his spinal marrow was affected. “Tubercular?” Imhof asked objectively. “Yes, exactly,” was the answer.

“All right, old boy! Fifth act, last scene,” he said to himself. Since fever ensued, and exhaustion alternated with violent pain, he took to his bed, had the windows darkened and the mirrors covered, and stared into space through the long hours with the expression of a frightened child.

He had never been able to get along without people. As far back as his memory went, his life had been as crowded as a fair. He had been hail-fellow-well-met with every one; they had all clung to him, and he had taken great pains to mean something to them all and to meet their wishes. And who was left to him now? No one. Whom did he desire? No one. Who would mourn for him? No man and no woman.

“I wonder what they’ll say about me when I’m gone?” he kept wondering. “Oh, yes, Imhof, they’ll say, don’t you recall him? Good fellow, pleasant companion, nothing slack about him, always in good spirits, always on the lookout for something new--a little touched, maybe. You must remember him. Why, he looked so and so and so. He talked like an Italian priest, wasted his money like an idiot, and drank like a fish.”

And in spite of such reminders many would not remember, but shrug their shoulders and begin to talk about something else.

He had neither father nor mother, sister nor brother, no relative and, in reality, no friends. His very birth was obscure. Its mystery would never be unveiled now. Perhaps he came of the dregs of mankind, perhaps of noble blood. But this mystery had, so far as he was concerned, neither romance nor charm. Only fate, for the sake of clearness, had stamped his being thus as that of a solitary, alienated, and self-dependent creature.

He had neither root nor connection nor bond. He was himself; nothing else. A personality fashioned by its moment in time--unique and complete in itself.

There was not even a servant who was faithful to him through personal devotion or through attachment to his house. No soul belonged to him--only things for which he had paid.

He had given much unselfish devotion to artists and works of art. A beautiful poem, an excellent picture had given his mind the elasticity and his mood the serenity which had compensated him for all the weariness and flatness of his environment. But seeking now to recall the impressions that had seemed unforgettable to him, he faced emptiness. The bubbling spring was choked with stone and sand. Did art, which he had loved so truly, sustain the spirit no better than some fleeting roadside adventure? What did it lack?

From the wreck of his fortune a few treasures had remained--a painting by Mantegna, the Three Kings from the East, an early Greek statue of Dionysos, a statue by Rodin, and a still-life by Von Gogh. He had these exquisite things and several others brought into his room, and sought to lose himself in the contemplation of them. But the old happy ecstasy would not return. The colours seemed dull and the marble without warmth or life. What had passed from these things? What change had come over them?

On the table beside his bed stood an hour-glass. He watched the reddish sand, fluid and swift as water, flicker through an eye from the upper bulb into the lower. It took twelve minutes. Leaning on his arms he watched it and reversed the bulbs whenever the upper one was empty. And again his eyes had the expression of a frightened child’s.

One day, as he was watching the running of the sand in the hour-glass, he said aloud to himself: “Death? What’s the meaning of that? It’s nonsense.”

It was an absurd word and idea, and he could not grasp it or penetrate it. Scarcely had he begun to gain the slightest conception of dying when he found that that very conception started from the idea of life. One had always been in space and was to leave it now. Yet wherever one passed to, there must be space also. And one could not think the concept space without also thinking oneself. Well, then....

A shiver passed over him. Then he smiled avidly. He thought of the delights that had been his--the fullness and wealth of pleasure and expectation, of ecstasy and triumph; of the feasts and revels and journeys and enterprises and games; of all the merry, multicoloured, changeful conflict. How delightful it had been to rise in the morning with one’s straight limbs; how delightful that wheels whirred and newsboys shrilled and bells clanged and dogs barked; and how exquisite it had been when a young woman, ready for love, loosened her hair and dropped her garments and her white flesh gleamed like the flesh of a fruit. Ah, and the pleasant comrades and the splendid horses, and the homecomings at night, just a little drunk. In the hall one longed for the first step of the stairs; it seemed so comfortable, logical, inviting. Upstairs the windows were open, and in one of them was a bunch of flowers. At all times and in all places one felt: “I am here, in the midst of it, lord of the foam and music of life. I command and life obeys, and there will be a to-morrow and a day after to-morrow, and endless days, like slender trees along an avenue.” And at such moments he had felt tender toward himself and flattered by his own breath, and had fed on air and light and clouds and men and songs. And everything had been goodly to his taste--even the ugly things and the rain and the very puddles in the street. For he was alive ... alive....

He reversed the hour-glass and fell back among the pillows. His eyes became aware of a small, grey spider that crept up the purple silk of the wall-hangings. It frightened him. Suddenly the thought struck him: “It is possible, even likely, that the spider will still exist when I am gone.” This reflection frightened him beyond expression, and he watched the spider’s slow progress with breathless suspense.

“Is it conceivable,” he thought, “that the horrible and trivial spider will be in a world from which I am gone? It is maddening. I have never believed in it and cannot believe in it--in unconsciousness and darkness, and the damp and the earth and the worms. And the spider is to live and I am not? Not I who filled all space with my being and my vitality? Is there any philosophy or religion or conviction that is not smashed to bits against this one fact? Supposing there were someone who had the power to let me go on living as a street-sweeper, a beggar, a jail-bird, despised, deformed, absurd, impotent. It almost seems to me that I would accept life even at that price. Good God, where do such thoughts lead one? What shameful ideas are these for a man who has always insisted on cleanliness and honour! Have I ever slunk away before an affront or failed to uphold my dignity? And yet I know that I would choose life at any price. The pains of the soul? Much I care about them! I would welcome grief, disappointment, bitterness, hatred, and loss--so I could but live ... but live....”

An hour later Weikhardt was announced. Imhof considered whether he should see him. He had denied himself to all callers during the past few days, but he could not make up his mind to refuse to see the painter, whom he had always liked uncommonly well.

“Is it Eliphaz, Bildad, or Zophar who comes to comfort Job?” he addressed Weikhardt. “You remember the incident, don’t you? ‘They lifted up their eyes afar off, and knew him not, they lifted up their voice and wept; and they rent every one his mantle, and sprinkled dust upon their heads toward heaven.’”

Weikhardt smiled. But when his eyes had become accustomed to the semi-darkness of the room and he saw the emaciated face, his mocking impulse fled.

For a while their talk was superficial. Weikhardt told about his marriage, his work, his vain efforts after economic security, and finally gossipped a little. Imhof listened with wavering attention. Suddenly he asked with apparent equanimity: “How is that marvellous female salamander?”

“What salamander? Whom do you mean?”

“Whom should I mean? Sybil, of course! Wasn’t it the maddest and wildest thing that the trivial word of a soulless creature should have brought swift decision into the slow process of my fate? Was it Providence? Was it so written in the stars?”

“I don’t understand,” Weikhardt murmured.

“Don’t you? Didn’t you know that the horrible little wooden fay called me a ‘nigger,’ and that I revenged myself in my characteristic way by playing a trump that lost me the whole game? I went and sought the company to which her icy scorn had sent me. I slept with a Negro woman to shame the white girl and break her vanity, at least in my imagination. Wasn’t it sublime? And you didn’t know it?”

“I knew of nothing,” Weikhardt murmured in astonishment. A long silence followed.

Imhof continued in a changed voice. “The things that followed weren’t so different from former experiences. But the central nerve was sick and the source of life poisoned. Sometimes I’m tempted to hasten the disgustingly slow execution by a clean bullet. It’s too undignified to have death glide about you as an overfed cat circles around a trapped mouse. Or else one could do the Sardanapalus act--light fireworks and burn the house down, and make one’s exit with a grandiose gesture.”

“It would be cheap and meretricious,” Weikhardt said, “you’d never forgive another for it.”

“I’m not capable of it in reality. I cling desperately to the depressing rag of life that’s left. Ah, to live at all--what that means!” He bit into his pillow, and moaned: “I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die!”

Weikhardt arose to approach the bed. But Imhof beckoned him passionately away. “Thus do I expiate,” he moaned. “Thus is the great devourer being devoured. Thus Time hurls me from its bosom. Look upon me writhing here and crying for pardon, and go out and tell the others about it. Give them my love! And give my love to all dear boys and girls! Good-bye, my friend, good-bye!”

Weikhardt took his leave without a word.

X

Karen’s body had been given back to the earth. Many of the people from the house had accompanied it to the grave. Christian thought he had also observed Johanna and Voss.

On the way home Dr. Voltolini walked beside him. For a while they did not speak. Then Christian with the perception of something unpleasant at his back, suddenly turned around. Ten paces behind he saw Niels Heinrich Engelschall. As Christian stopped, the other stopped too, and pretended to look at a shop window.

In the cemetery Christian had escaped from the friends who had accompanied him. Now, too, he would have preferred loneliness; but he did not want to wound the physician.

Continuing a conversation which they had started before the funeral, Dr. Voltolini said: “Stübbe ought to be separated from his family and placed in an institution. At any time delirium tremens might break out and he might kill the whole crowd. And even as it is, the poor woman can’t endure his cruelty much longer. She’s at the end of her strength.”

“I’ve interfered several times during the past few days,” Christian answered softly. “Other neighbours helped too. A man like that is worse than a wolf. The children stand around and tremble.”

“And it’s so difficult,” said Dr. Voltolini, “to get the authorities to take any preventive measures. The law is unreasonably severe. Once a misfortune has taken place, it enters more mercilessly than is necessary; but it can never be moved to prevent anything.”

Again Christian turned around. Niels Heinrich was still following. Again he stopped, looked about him indifferently, and spat on the sidewalk.

“It is never a question of what one knows or desires, but always of what one does,” Christian said, walking on again.

“And even what one has done, though it be inspired by the purest motives and the strictest sense of duty, is spattered with mud, and one must suffer for it as for a crime,” Dr. Voltolini said bitterly.

“Has that been your experience?” Christian asked, with apparently conventional sympathy, but with his aware and listening glance.

“I don’t like to talk about it,” Dr. Voltolini said, with a saddened mien. “I haven’t done so to any one here so far. You’re the first and only one who have made me want to talk. I felt that way so soon as I had met you. It isn’t as though you could advise or help me; it’s far too late for either. My misfortune has done its worst and has receded into the past. But constant silence gnaws at me, and I can escape a period of paralysis if I can tell you the story of what happened to me.”

Christian shook his head very slightly in his astonishment. Many people had already said similar words to him, and he did not understand their motive.

Dr. Voltolini continued: “Until two years ago I practised at Riedberg, near Freiwaldau, in Austrian Silesia. The town is several miles from the frontier of Prussia. Quite near it medicinal springs were discovered. It became a health resort of increasing popularity, and I and my family gradually attained a modest prosperity. But in the beginning of the summer of 1905 it happened that the wife of a cottager was attacked by typhoid fever, and I, according to my sworn duty, reported the case to the health authorities. Several citizens wanted to prevent my action. Even the commission on sanitation, whose chairman was mayor of the town, raised objections, and represented to me how the guests would be scared away for a long time and the town get a bad name. I told them I was acting in the interests of every one and could not be deterred by merely material considerations. First they besought and finally threatened me, but I remained firm.

“The first consequence was that a regiment, which had been ordered to Riedberg, and whose being stationed there would have been profitable to the town, was sent elsewhere. The panic that had been feared among the guests in the hotels did break out, and most of them fled. And now a wretched stream of abuse was poured out over me, and every one raged against me in the filthiest terms. The men did not respond to my greeting on the street. The butcher and baker and dairyman refused to sell their goods to my wife. Daily I received anonymous letters; you can imagine their character. My windows were smashed; no one came to my consultation hours, no patient dared to summon me. The fees that people owed me were not paid, and suspicions and slanders arose, ranging from silly talk to the vilest insinuations.

“Finally I was discharged from my office of district physician. I appealed to the National Medical Association, which in its turn appealed to the highest authorities. The town council and the sanitary commission were both dissolved by the governor of the province, the mayor was removed from office, my own dismissal revoked, and an escort of gendarmes despatched to the town to protect me and mine from violence. The trouble was that my situation was as bad as ever. The government could protect me from bodily hurt, but it could neither give me back my practice nor force my old patients to pay what they owed me. I was ruined. In the course of five months I brought twenty-one suits of slander and won every case. But I was more discouraged each time. It became clear that I could not stay at Riedberg. But where was I to go--a country doctor without private means, with a wife and children and, a feeble, aged mother to support? How was I to silence the slanderers, wash off the stain, and heal the inner hurt? I had no friend there who could lend me support; from the consolations of my wife there came to me only the voice of her own despair.

“I broke down completely. For eleven months I lay in a hospital. With unexampled energy my wife was busy during this period founding a new home for us and finding a new field of activity for me. I received permission to practise in Germany, and began life anew. Although I had lost faith both in my own powers and in mankind, my soul gradually grew calm again. Our circumstances are the most modest; but in this great city it is possible to be alone and to prevent the interference of strangers. For a long time I could practise my profession only if I forgot that my patients were human. I had to regard them as mechanisms that were to be repaired. Their pain and sorrow I passed over, and I hated to notice either. Do you understand that? Do you understand my coldness and contempt?”

“After all your experiences I can well understand it,” Christian answered. “But I believe your standpoint is no longer the same. Am I right? It seems to me that a change has taken place in you.”

“Yes, a change has taken place,” Dr. Voltolini admitted. “And it began----” He stopped and cast an unobtrusive glance at his companion. After a pause he said timidly: “Why did you smile that day when the Schirmacher girl showed you her ring? Do you remember? You may, of course, reply: it was natural to smile, for the stone which delighted her so was quite worthless, and yet to disillusion her would have been cruel. And yet your smile didn’t express that. It expressed something else.”

Christian said: “I really don’t remember precisely. I do remember the ring and the girl’s pleasure in it, but I can’t tell you to-day just why I smiled. It would have been better, by the way, if the girl had been less happy. A few days later she lost the ring, and the poor thing cried for hours. It would have been better if I had said to her: ‘Neither the ring nor the stone is worth anything.’ I should have told her to throw it away. On such occasions it is almost always better to say to people, ‘Throw it away.’ Perhaps I smiled because that is what I wanted to say and didn’t have the courage.”

“That’s how it looked,” Dr. Voltolini said quickly and with a touch of excitement. “That’s the impression I had.”

“Why speak of it?” Christian said.

They had reached the house on Stolpische Street. Niels Heinrich, who had followed them, disappeared among the vehicles on the street.

Dr. Voltolini looked at the pavement, and said with embarrassment and hesitation: “You could do a great deal for me in the sense you suggested, if I might call on you every now and then. It sounds strange and like a confession of weakness, coming from a man of my years to one of yours. I can’t justify my request, but I know I should be helped. I would get on and be more reconciled to my fate and work harder at the re-establishment of my life.” His eyes were turned tensely to Christian’s face.

Christian lowered his head, and after some reflection answered: “Your request is very flattering. I should be glad to serve you; I hope I may. But in order not to put you off with empty phrases, I should tell you that I shall be deeply preoccupied in the immediate future--not only inwardly, I am always that, but outwardly too. I am confronted with a difficult task--a terribly difficult task.”

Struck by Christian’s terrible seriousness Dr. Voltolini said: “I don’t mean to be inquisitive. But may I ask what that task is?”

“To find the man who murdered Ruth Hofmann.”

“How?” The physician was utterly astonished. “But I thought that the ... murderer had been arrested.”

Christian shook his head. “It is not the right man,” he said, softly but with assurance. “I saw him. I saw him when he appeared before the investigating judge. I knew him before the crime too. He is not the murderer.”

“That sounds strange,” said Dr. Voltolini. “Is that merely your personal opinion, or do the authorities also----?”

“It’s not an opinion,” Christian said meditatively. “Perhaps it’s more, perhaps it’s less--quite as one chooses. I don’t know what the authorities suspect. Undoubtedly they consider Joachim Heinzen the murderer. He has confessed, but I consider his confession false.”

“Did you express that opinion before the judge?”

“No. How could I have done that? I haven’t even a legitimate suspicion. Only I know that the man who is now held is not the murderer.”

“But how do you expect to find the real criminal, if you haven’t even a suspicion?”

“I don’t know, but I must do it.”

“You ... you must? What does that mean?”

Christian did not answer. He raised his eyes and held out a friendly hand to Dr. Voltolini. “And so, if you should come and not find me, don’t be angry at me. We shall meet again.”

The doctor clasped his hand firmly and silently.

Christian went into the house and up to Karen’s rooms. Fifteen minutes later Niels Heinrich mounted the same stairs.

XI