Part 10

Myra could not bear the heavy, soft air. She could not sleep and suffered from headaches day and night. Reading no longer sufficed to distract her mind. She sat bowed over her books and stared out the window. The same page would lie in front of her for hours without her ever turning it.

She began to read novels. She could not forget she was reading them as easily as she could dry scientific works because they stirred her imagination and evoked certain pictures.

But those pictures were a torture to her.

There were always people in love with one another. They struggled with one another, discovered one another, came together or parted, destroyed one another, died or abandoned one another. It hurt her to read of love.

She read of riches, of luxury, of automobiles dashing along highways, of white hotels beside blue waters, of balls and banquets and yachts and journeys by sledge. Then she would begin to calculate her fortune and think, “Olga Radó could have led just such a life if she had remained with me.”

The cherries blossomed. Olga Radó was no doubt going by steamer with some lovely woman, over the blue waters of the Havel. And all about her was a world of beauty and sunshine and light.

Myra was seized with a mad desire to be where Olga was, to lead Olga’s life. Pride dropped away from her like a burned rag. She stood naked to herself and cried out with the pain.

She wrote her third letter to Olga Radó. She wrote that she could no longer live and breathe without her. That she wanted nothing from her, not love, or affection or friendship. That she wanted nothing but to serve her with all her strength, and in payment she would let herself be beaten and kicked. That she would feel no jealousy, no craving, no lust of possession. That she would serve anyone, man or woman, whom Olga loved, and that she would chain and immure her love so deep within her that never, never, never would anyone suspect its existence, not even Olga.

Again she waited for an answer. Again none came.

Suddenly it occurred to her that Olga might not have received her letters, certainly had not received them.

She went to Motz Street and every step made her feel as if she were walking on red hot coals. The same maid answered her ring who had admitted her that night. Myra could not bring herself to utter Olga’s name, so she asked for Peterkin.

He had moved—address unknown.

She lived through ten more days of torture. Then she went again. A new maid opened the door. “I’m in luck,” thought Myra and she was dizzied for a moment as the idea flashed through her mind that the next instant she might be standing face to face with Olga in her room. What might happen afterwards was of no moment.

Miss Radó had moved—address unknown.

Myra went to the bureau of registry. She filled out the prescribed blank and gave it to the gray-haired official while her heart throbbed wildly.

The friendly old gentleman rose, went searching, returned and asked if the lady lived in her own house. No? Unfortunately, they did not register people who lived in lodging-houses.

Then Myra made her last and most difficult attempt. She went to the Moebiuses. The girls grinned in her face, impudently, when she asked about Olga Radó.

No, they didn’t know anything about her. Naturally, she had not put in her appearance here again, and father would probably have very politely given her the air if she had. But they would be _delighted_ to find things out. Ablaze with curiosity and pruriency, they began to ply her with questions, whether it was true that....

Myra blushed and paled, turned hot and cold. She might have murdered one of them if she had not been so tired. “I don’t know,” she said. She answered all their questions with “I don’t know.”

Perhaps she should have become indignant and defended Olga Radó. Perhaps she should have let them slander her and have made all kinds of mysterious insinuations. Perhaps she should have laughed and led the girls a merry chase. She supported herself against her chair with both hands, and said, “I don’t know!”

As she left the house she realized that she would never enter it again. A senseless expression kept running through her mind as in a delirium—“To be on everybody’s tongue....”

It had never before had any meaning for her. Now she felt, actually in a physical way, as if she had been chewed over and spat out on the sidewalk. She shuddered with nausea.

* * * * *

From time to time, but at ever shorter intervals, a dull racking hatred began to tarnish the surface of her feeling for Olga Radó. That woman was to blame for all that she was now suffering—heedlessly, cold-heartedly and quite unscrupulously to blame.

During this period, Myra was very unjust to Olga Radó. For it seemed to her as if she had been torn by her from a happy shielded youth, as if a profound and placid peace had been destroyed in her, some marvellous equilibrium shattered.

The be-all and end-all of her desire seemed to her to be a return to what she had once been. Her one wish was to strike the last year out of her life, to expunge, to forget it.

Then she would take up those evil books again and deliberately read the things which had most nauseated her. She thus artificially intensified her hate and anger and fear.

There were days when she said to herself, “At last I am free! It’s as if I had recovered from a severe illness; I feel that my blood is pure again. From now on I shall live as other people do, without pain and without joy, without desire and without fulfillment.”

And there were nights when she felt as if a burning poison were eating at her veins, when fear of an unutterly horrible future made her shudder. Nights when she felt she must succumb to her unbridled appetites, must give herself unresistingly to every loose woman who for criminal reasons chose to arouse her passion. She saw herself victimized by blackmailers, tracked by the police, sick, insane, in prison or murdered.

In one such period of abysmal despair she permitted herself to become engaged. Some decent, solid man or other came courting her.

She knew nothing about him. She did not know when or where she had seen him for the first time, knew hardly anything of his character or his inclinations. She simply became aware one day that for some time there had been some person around her who had made an effort to be kind to her. Someone who helped her on most carefully with her coat, stooped when she dropped something, brought her flowers, and tried to tell her cheerful stories in order to brighten her face a little.

The man knew as agreeably little about her. In his presence Aunt Emily bubbled over with gentle, motherly solicitude. She could just as well have made biting observations or cutting innuendoes about him, but he fitted into her program.

He pitied Myra tremendously because she was an orphan. He ascribed all the suffering in her pale face to grief for her father. Sometimes he ventured to take her cold fingers in both his hands and gently stroke them. At such moments Myra would close her eyes and scrutinize her feelings in terror. Warmth and peace flowed from his big strong hands. His gentle tenderness was pleasant rather than abhorrent. Then Myra would say to herself with a burst of hope, “Perhaps everything will be all right, after all. Perhaps I shall have somebody near who is good to me, I’ll have children and a home, I’ll always have something to do—perhaps it is still possible for a life like that to be bearable.”

She felt, too, an irrepressible desire for revenge. It might wound Olga Radó’s vanity somewhat, if she learned how quickly she had been forgotten.

The man was rich. That suited Aunt Emily and incidentally suited Myra. She pictured herself in the loge at the opera, flashing with jewels, beside this man, a very attractive and stately man—it would never occur to anyone that she had not married him for love—and suddenly Olga Radó would appear from somewhere. Or she saw herself driving past Olga Radó in a de luxe car. Or best of all, she saw them meeting when she was walking with her fair-haired children dressed neatly in white. Then she would draw the children away from Olga as if from a venomous snake. That was the way, yes, indeed, that was the way to wound Olga most cruelly.

As the man was persistent, Myra said yes. She had had sufficient time to accustom herself and took good care that it appeared in various newspapers.

On her twenty-first birthday, there was a little garden party at the villa of her parents-in-law. It was a very hot day in summer, the nineteenth of June, and on Aunt Emily’s advice, Myra again put on a white dress trimmed with black.

As she strolled past a mirror in that strange house with all the strange people about her, she did not recognize herself. She was shocked and could not rid herself of the idea that she was not the pretty girl dressed in white, who smiled at her from the mirror, on the arm of that strange man.

She tried to find herself and could not imagine where she could be. But it seemed to her as if she saw herself, thin and dark, like a specter, wandering through great, dark, empty rooms. Again, it seemed to her as if she really was the reflection in the glass, and that that other Myra, who was so identically like her, was the stranger. Dream and reality began to merge inextricably; all her nerves seemed to thrill like snapped chords. In mortal fear she longed for complete unconsciousness or for sudden complete clarity, feeling as if she were blinded by fog or a prey to vertigo. A moment later, she could not understand exactly what had happened to her, or give any answer to her fiancé who anxiously inquired the cause of her paleness.

But the singular feeling persisted all evening that all this was simply a dream, a game. The whole business of the engagement was simply a joke, a comedy. Each moment might step forward like a stage-manager and cry, “Enough! Let reality resume!”

* * * * *

On the twentieth of June, in the morning, Myra was called to the telephone. A light masculine voice spoke from the receiver, curiously restrained and hesitant.

“Is this Miss Rudloff herself? Myra, is that you? Forgive me for disturbing you—I wanted to speak to you!”

Myra felt her heart tear itself loose and plunge into an unfathomable dark abyss.

“Peterkin?” she said and tried to suppress her smile without stopping to think that no one could see her face. Nor could anyone have heard that smile in the trembling of her voice.

“May I speak with you, Myra? I mean....” Again that timid hesitation in his voice. “If you care to, you understand. Of course, I don’t know how interested you are in your old friends now.”

“It goes without saying,” said Myra firmly, “that you can see me any time, where and when you wish.”

She did not ask what had happened. She did not want to ask.

“It can’t come very well.” Again that timid tone. “And I’d rather not go on the street ... or to a coffee-house.... It really wouldn’t do....”

“I’ll come to you,” said Myra quickly. “Tell me where you live!”

“Yes—but—is that all right either? Particularly—if anything unpleasant should happen.... You’re engaged....”

“Nonsense!” said Myra roughly.

* * * * *

As she hurried down the street she did not try to picture what might actually have happened. She did not want to. “Perhaps Olga is sick and wants to see me,” she thought. “Perhaps she doesn’t know anything about it, and Peterkin simply called me of his own accord.”

She simply thought that she would see Olga, that she would take her hand. At the same time she thought, “I tell myself these things as we tell a feverish child stories, I paint them in the brightest colors, and believe them no more than we believe in fairies and sorcerers.”

But it was better to tell herself stories, better to sing herself cradle-songs, than to listen to the voice that cried the truth deep within her.

It was strange how, without a moment’s hesitation, she found the house and the street as if she had been there a hundred times.

When she rang, Peterkin was already at the door. That spared her any interrogation. And she felt, looking at the maid, the first human face she noticed, that she was in no condition to answer questions.

Peterkin took Myra by the hand and, without a word, led her past the astonished maid and into his room. He shut the door, and without looking at her, said, “Sit down, Myra.”

The first thing that Myra noticed in the room was the gold cigarette case on the black surface of the table. A ray of sunlight was flashing on it.

She made an effort to restrain herself. It was as if she tugged at the reins with both hands in order to check herself. But when Peterkin turned to her, and she saw how his hands, how his small white face quivered, with what an effort he was struggling for control—she lost control herself. She began to cry.

“Cry, cry,” he said at last, his chin quivering, while the tears started from his eyes. “Cry, for she was worthy of tears, you can believe me....”

“Believe you?” said Myra with heart-rending bitterness. She laid the handkerchief over her eyes and supported her head in her hand. Her other hand stroked his nervously.

“Now tell me everything, Peterkin. You see that I’m quite calm again, quite, quite calm. When did it happen? How? And why? Tell me everything, everything you know!”

“I could not tell you, Myra—not before your twenty-first birthday. That was yesterday, wasn’t it? I’ve marked it here on the calendar—for another reason—I’ll have to tell you all about that, too. I had a message to deliver to you. But of course, I had no suspicion—sometimes it is as if we were struck blind....”

Myra glanced up for a moment. “Did she do it herself?” There was nothing interrogatory in her tone.

“Yes.”

“Did she shoot herself?”

She covered her eyes again with her handkerchief.

“Go on.”

“She was sick during the spring, a light case of influenza. She had some fever and I used to sit beside the bed while she talked of death and burial, quite cheerfully and unconcernedly, as she always did. You know very well that nobody ever knew whether she was jesting or in earnest. She said to me at that time, ‘If I die now, Peterkin, take good care to keep it quiet. Don’t let it get into any of the papers, and don’t let anybody know about it, not even Myra. I’d like to strew my ashes on the sea or at least on the Wannsee. But the State won’t permit that, I believe. So simply make haste and have my remains cremated. I will have no traffic with my corpse. I won’t be inside it, you can be sure of that. Not for one moment longer than necessary will I remain inside my corpse.’”

To Myra it seemed as if she were hearing Olga speak. So clearly did she hear her voice, that her heart was filled with an inner joy and she smiled.

“I smiled, too, at the time,” said Peterkin sorrowfully. “But she became quite serious and sat up and looked at me. You know how she could look at one out of her intense eyes. ‘It is my sacred wish,’ she said. ‘Promise me you’ll do it, give me your word of honor!’ I promised her, but I said, ‘You’re crazy, in three days you’ll be well again.’ And she was well again in three days.” He stopped. Somewhere a clock was ticking and flies were buzzing against the window-pane.

Something filled Myra with a few moments of joy and tranquillity. An obscure feeling—how good that Olga was well again in three days. There was so much vigorous life in that beautiful body.

Then the present struck at her heart like a clenched fist. And now? And now? She had to wait a few moments before she could bring herself to utter the terrible word.

“Did you bury her at once?” she asked in a very low voice.

“She was cremated. The urn was sent to Vienna. Her sister lives there....”

“Did she live here toward the end?”

“Two doors away, around the corner.”

“And it happened there?”

“Yes.”

“Can one ...” Myra swallowed hard, “can one see the room?”

Peterkin shrugged his shoulders slowly. “What is the use? Everything is changed. Nothing of hers is left. It has been rented again.”

She had a peculiar feeling; it seemed to her as a curiously happy fact that every pattern which this spirit had created was now destroyed. There was not even a room left in the world which those hands, that mind, had arranged, and in which a trace of her being might have survived. Half unconsciously, Myra felt as if the shifting of a few pieces of furniture had broken the stones from a prison wall.

Now Olga Radó was wholly free.

A gentle breeze stirred the curtains at the open window. A sweet, cool breeze blew over Myra’s burning eyes. She smiled.

“It is best that way!” she said again.

Suddenly she understood that Olga had not received her letters. There was no need to inquire about it. But Peterkin was the only person of whose opinion she was a little afraid. She felt that she must justify herself.

“I wrote Olga three times!” she said.

“I had an idea that you did,” said Peterkin with a gloomy smile.

“She never received a line.”

“But you knew it anyway?”

“Of course. We talked often enough about you.”

While Peterkin was speaking, Myra had a curious feeling that she was living over in a few minutes and with the most powerful intensity, the last six months of her life. It seemed to her as if on that unhappy morning the woof-thread had been broken and day by day had labored at a make-shift pattern that was false. Now that false woof had suddenly been unravelled as the shuttle plied backwards like lightning. The thread was knotted where it had been broken and the true pattern was resumed, a little curtailed, perhaps, a little fainter in color, but there it was, woven for the present and for all days to come.

“What did you say about me?”

“Oh, a great many things. I urged her so often to write to you, to establish some sort of contact with you. But she was convinced that she must not do it. Sometimes I thought I would telephone you, or I’d waylay you somewhere against her will. Once I suggested it to her. She glared at me out of her big eyes. ‘If you ever do any such thing,’ she said, ‘our friendship is over with for all time! Do you want to destroy the poor child?’ She was always of the opinion that you were happy and that things were going well with you. But I was sure you must divine what was going on. I tried so hard, you’ll never know how hard. Once I promenaded under your windows for a whole hour. I always thought that if I could only speak to you, we would find some way out. I always thought that everything would be all right in the end. Then you became engaged. Yes, then I had to admit at last that she was right.”

“Oh, you idiot!” said Myra, laughing through her tears.

“I remember the day so well. Olga came up to my room early in the morning. She sat huddled over in the easy-chair, smoking one cigarette after another. For half an hour she did not utter a word. I sat here at the desk, pretending I was working. I had tossed aside my paper when I heard her coming. But from the way she sat there, I thought, ‘She knows already!’ She knew I knew it, but neither of us wanted to begin the conversation. When she finally did, she kept saying ‘I’m so happy, I’m so glad!’ And she demanded that I celebrate with her, too. In the evening we went to have a bottle of wine together. She made me do it. I can still see her as she sat at the table, turning the wine-glass in her hand. She had such a curious smile all that day. Again she said to me, ‘So little Myra is going to be married. That’s fine, fine. Our little Myra will have children, real lads who will never know a trouble in life.’ Then she kept demanding that I say how happy it made me. And I had to say so—as matters then stood it was the best thing to do—but from that day on she lived in morbid dread of meeting you somewhere on the street. Sometimes when she needed something, she would ask me to get it. She would sit here, pale, with her hands folded, and say, ‘Please, please, Peterkin, I can’t go to the store.’ For the last eight or ten days she hardly left her room. She used to telephone me to come over, she did not want to go on the street. But of course, there was another reason for that as well....”

“What was that?” asked Myra after staring silently out of the window for a long time.

He cast a quick and searching glance at her. “So you don’t know?” he asked as if relieved. “You really know nothing about it? I was sure you didn’t. But they had her shadowed—your people, you know. No matter where she went there was always a detective after her. Oh, she suffered so cruelly because of that!”

“But why?” asked Myra. “Why should they do that? They had me where they wanted me. They knew just where I spent every hour of the day.”

“Probably they were afraid. They may have thought, before your engagement at any rate, that you might waver in your resolves, or that she might try to influence you again; they may have wanted to catch her at something so that they could have her deported as an undesirable alien. Your Uncle bought up all her debts. You did not know that either, I believe. So they had her cornered. Every day there were letters from attorneys, from the courts.... Later on she simply refused to open them. She used to let them pile up on her desk. I said to her sometimes, ‘You can’t do that, you must answer them, you must go, you must make promises.’ Then she would smile an infinitely melancholy smile. ‘I’ve lost my sense of humor, Peterkin,’ she would say, ‘I’m old and tired. It isn’t a hunt as far as I’m concerned’—and she indicated the pile of papers with a wave of her hand.