Part 14

“I must not be a coward,” she thought, “I will have my destiny and I will go forward to meet it. I will open my arms and bear with joy everything that is meted out to me. I will love life no matter what it brings.”

The sweet, hot dance melodies quivered through the air. They seemed to force Myra’s steps to fall into their light and fiery rhythms, while her thoughts kept iterating like the refrain of a song, “I will love life, I will love life.”

When Myra stood before Gisela and Mara had mentioned names and made a gesture of presentation, there was that strange feeling again—“What is the purpose of it all? What will happen now? We have been introduced, that is, we know one another’s names, the series of letters whereby we are listed in official registers, and that gives us the right to talk to one another. But nothing gives me the right to utter what I am thinking. If I were to say, ‘I wanted to know you because you make me feel so dreadfully sorry, because Mrs. Meidinger has told me that you take morphine in order to deaden your grief, your sorrow over a woman, and because I understand you so well and would like to try to help you, or at least be unhappy with you’—if I said that to her, they would shut me up in a lunatic asylum. And quite rightly, for if I were in a normal state of mind I could never bring myself to say such things.”

“I believe that I have seen you before,” said Myra with a reserved smile, half to Gisela, half to Mara Luigi. “Weren’t you at the pension recently?”

“Yes, of course,” Gisela’s dark eyes were fastened on Myra. “That’s where I saw you, too. That’s why your face looked so familiar to me. Come on and sit down beside me, there’s still room.”

“Thanks,” said Myra and smoothed her taffeta dress before she sat down.

Again she felt a slight anxiety because she thought that it was her duty to say something, something, too, that would lift her above the average—but she couldn’t think of anything.

Gisela was not so easily embarrassed in beginning a conversation. “You know little Luigi from the pension, don’t you?”

Myra nodded.

“She brought you here, didn’t she? You haven’t got anything to do with art and such awful things, have you?”

“Unfortunately, no,” said Myra.

“Unfortunately? Thank God and your most honorable parents that you have a decent occupation.”

“But I haven’t any.”

“Haven’t any? That’s the most decent of all.”

“Are you serious? I think it’s dreadful not to have any occupation.”

“Why dreadful? Having an occupation means being paid for work. Taking money from somebody, that means being subservient to somebody, whether it’s an individual, or a company, or the public. Being at the public’s beck and call is the worst of all! If you have no occupation and don’t need to have one, then you’re your own master! That is to say, you’re not anybody else’s servant. Why is that dreadful?”

“I don’t know.” Myra wrung her hands with a gesture of helplessness. “Perhaps because then we don’t belong anywhere. Home has no meaning for us any more. I was born and brought up in the city. But does that give me any feeling of home? Yes, perhaps, if I were in Tokio and heard someone from the city talking I might discover some such feeling in myself, and might even become sentimental with him, when we thought of Potsdam or Linden. But just think how ridiculous it would be if we addressed somebody in Lucerne or Baden-Baden with ‘I believe you come from my native city!’

“We have no families any more either! Or we have no use for them. Sometimes I envy the old noble houses with their hundreds of branches, each linked by name. But above all I envy people who have an occupation, for every cobbler has connections with every other cobbler, cabmen have something in common with all other cabmen, physicians have their colleagues to help them in almost every village on the earth. The artists are like one big family, especially theatrical people. And sometimes—I don’t know if you will understand the feeling—it seems to me that it must be good to be chained quite firmly to something—so that one will not plunge into the abyss.”

“Oh, I understand it all right.... Have a cigarette?” She offered a narrow birchen case. “Only, I don’t altogether believe in this fellow-feeling of fellow-workers. No more than I believe in blood relationships. The greatest stranger in the world to me is my own sister. No, no, the same kind of education, the same kind of interests—they have about as much to do with people’s feeling for one another as the same kind of incomes.”

“But one must feel one belongs somewhere,” Myra objected, bewildered.

Gisela shrugged her shoulders wearily. “Yes, if you want to feel happy, to feel secure. But our best emotion is probably a fellow-feeling for our fellow man. Only, it is in very rare cases that we ever discover who he is. And what else is there? Sometime I think that people who have suffered the same misfortune, the same sickness should band together. The blind, the lame, the hunchbacked.”

This was approximately what Myra herself had previously thought. But when she heard it uttered by someone else, it roused her opposition.

“I don’t think,” she said reflectively, “that I would like to see myself surrounded by my own infirmities, especially if they were exaggerated or distorted, any more than I’d like to see myself in a mirror if I were a leper. At bottom it always pleases people more to hide their infirmities and keep them as inconspicuous as possible. And I don’t believe either that the ailing are especially sympathetic to one another! Everyone says to himself, ‘He’s a much worse case than I am!’”

A young man came up to Gisela and embraced her with a girlishly gentle and fawning gesture.

“You must sing something for us, Gisela,” he pleaded, “please, please, be nice!”

She shook her head without answering, knitting her brows a little.

But he did not release her and begged like a child. “Oh, please! Do be nice! Only for a few of us, one tiny little song!”

“My lute isn’t here, John.”

“Oh, you can use Sophus’, but come!”

With gentle coercion John tugged her from her place. His narrow face, sensitive features and delicate bloom of color were almost angelic in their beauty. His fair, gently waving hair was a little too long, his big dark blue eyes too soft, almost ardent in their expression.

Despite his surprising beauty, Myra thought his exterior almost repellent. But after a few moments she decided that it was really his costume which disturbed her, because it suited him so little. In a white tunic, in a silk doublet with puff sleeves, even in a gold embroidered rococo jacket he would have been a perfect picture.

Gisela, still tightly embraced by his arm, held out her hand to Myra. “Come with us, little girl,” she said. “I can’t promise you any great enjoyment, but I’ll be flattered if you’ll listen to my croakings.”

Myra seized the outstretched hand, letting it draw her along. It was a slender, feverishly hot, ruinously thin hand that clasped her fingers in a loose, but tenacious grip.

Somewhere in the distance she saw Eccarius’ face emerge. He did not even glance at her, and yet his grave and worried face seemed a reproach to her.

“I suppose I ought to pay some attention to him.” A slight feeling of fear, then her defiance blazed high. “But why should I? Why must I always be talking obligations into myself which really aren’t mine? From now on I’ll have regard for no one, I’ll go where I feel attracted—and only where I feel attracted!”

In the small adjoining room a dozen people were sitting, lying and crouching in the most varied postures. Sophie was there in her becoming page’s costume. Beside her was the young man called Will who had sat on the top of the alcove step, little Mara Luigi and the painter Giesbert, who was wearing a kind of cowboy costume, and Ulrich, the man with the grave, haggard face, and deep minor voice.

Someone lifted Gisela’s slight, light figure and set it on a table. John took the lute from Sophie and laid it in Gisela’s arms.

A young person in a silk Pierrot’s costume who was dashing about with a tray of glasses, offered one to Myra. Myra drank down the sweet and fiery wine at a draught, in order to be rid of the glass, and found herself searching for a seat.

Sophie extended her hand to her. “Come here to me, little lost bird,” she said. “No one will hurt you here.”

“I’m not afraid,” said Myra smiling.

And she really was not. She felt quite content and well concealed in the deep, soft silk cushions between two faces that did not seem strange or unpleasant to her.

Little John with his page-like grace seated himself at her feet. And although she felt no particular liking for him, she enjoyed his slightly cuddling touch.

Gisela tuned the strings, her head bent low. Her loose black hair fell about her cheeks. With a sudden toss she raised her head, shook back her hair, and after a few opening chords began to sing.

Somewhere A voice is calling through the dark night, A voice that makes me tremble.

Somewhere, On their hot couch, hot hands incite My longing hands to tremble.

Somewhere A heart weeps quietly for the right Against my own to tremble.

Her voice was small as if muffled by a veil, but the deeper tones especially had a passionate, enthralling ring. Myra felt as if she were caught in the web of a sweet, dreamy happiness that was, nevertheless, a painful longing.

Sophie had put her arm around her, and now and again her hand kept time to the music by stroking Myra’s shoulder gently and soothingly.

Sometimes Gisela’s eyes sought out Myra while she was singing. Their glances met, were fixed one upon another, and it seemed to Myra as if Gisela were singing every word to her. “Sweet life,” she thought, “beautiful, beloved life!”

She felt a feverish longing that filled her heart to overflowing. It was a longing without name or object. It was a longing for distant lands, a longing for affection. It was a longing for glittering fame, for heroic deeds, and a longing, too, for grandmother’s quiet garden, for the meadow over which the bees hummed.

Your sad and silvern soul Draws its last gasp in blood. Alas, that it stands sole, Alone, by me unfound. For your soul will be drowned, Will plunge beyond control, Sink, drown in burning blood— Since my cool hand has never found Your brow to still the fevered flood.

A shade of almost sorrowful gravity passed over Sophie’s beautiful, cheerful features. She smiled, but it seemed as if her smile were steeped in melancholy.

“Wait a moment.” She motioned to Gisela with her hand. “I want to get Nora. You know how much she loves to listen to you.”

She rose abruptly. John sprang up at the same moment. “Can I help you?” he asked, it was a plea.

Myra thought his words sounded mysterious.

Sophie and John did not enter the large hall-like room from which they had come. Sophie opened a glass-door behind a curtain which gave upon the night-darkened garden.

“Leave it open a moment,” she begged. “It is so warm outside. We’ll be back this way.”

Gisela hesitated. Some interior struggle was reflected in her mobile features.

“Sophie,” she called, springing down from the high table, “would you rather that I came with you? I can sing in the next room just as well.”

“No, no,” said Sophie. She was standing on the step and had lifted the two parts of the curtain so that they framed her slender figure for a moment. “It is so crowded and smoky in there, and dusty from the dancing, and one can’t make the whole crowd listen quietly. Besides, I’m glad to have a good reason for enticing Nora out for a while. She’d never decide to come herself, and if she doesn’t, the evening will be too much for her.”

She nodded gratefully to Gisela and vanished in the darkness. Through the half-open door, streamed the manifold fragrances of the night and its flowers.

Over the little circle lay an expectant silence. Those who were sitting side by side made observations in hushed voices. Gisela strummed her lute without raising her eyes.

The murmured conversation presently grew louder and somewhat more lively, only to subside entirely when heavy steps were heard crunching the gravel in the garden. Then the most intimate friends of the household began to talk rapidly again in a fashion that seemed to say: “We were not waiting for you, we shall pay no particular notice to you when you come.”

Involuntarily Myra glanced at the garden-door, and though she instantly controlled herself, she started and felt that she had turned pale.

They were leading, they were dragging Nora in.

Sophie was supporting her on one side, John on the other. But they could not raise her heavy upper body; it sagged forward as if it were bent, broken. With an effort Nora raised her head, and her soft brown eyes, filled with silent suffering, like those of an injured animal, met Myra’s for a second.

Ulrich moved up a chair, Will set down cushions for her feet; an instant later she was sitting in her easy-chair, her hands laid upon its arms, her knees, which were drawn up a little higher than most people’s, covered by the lightly flowing folds of her silken veils, her fair head laid back upon a violet-colored cushion. Again a picture of almost queenly beauty.

Not unless one observed closely, was a slight twitching discernible around her mouth and cheeks—from pain or the unusually violent exertion.

Myra’s heart was quite filled with contradictory feelings. She felt a terror that verged on horror and even aversion; an anguish of sympathy, but at the same time, a fear as of dark veils falling, of a slowly settling, unbearable burden.

Had not life been simply bright and gay and alluring? Had she not loved it with a hot, longing, ardent, sacrificing love? And was it not now as if a fiery and flexible dancer, the swaying of whose arms had intoxicated her, suddenly had torn the mask from his face, and with a mocking grin pointed to a fleshless death’s head?

What was there in the world after all? What could one expect from life? Misery and affliction, sickness and death, and bitter, freezing solitude....

Gisela plucked several chords and began to sing.

Somewhere The alarm rings dull and heavily.

Somewhere, It says, home-going tolls for me.

Somewhere The long white roads lead well away;

Somewhere Will lead me home to earth, some day.

She bowed her head lower over her instrument. It was strange how the tones found their way out of her restricted breast.

Everyone was silent when she had finished.

Will was the first to speak. “More, more,” he cried. “Another, another!”

Others shouted after him. Gisela slipped down from the table and laid the lute in a corner. Her weary movements were those of a child, but her face, which was always narrow, had become old and small.

“I believe I cannot sing any more,” she said, as if asking forgiveness. Her voice was no more than a hoarse whisper.

Through the door of the adjoining room came an elderly fat man with an ugly, bloated face. Inside, someone was thumping the piano, but it could hardly be heard for the noise and laughter and the shuffling of dragging feet.

The fat man seized little John around the body with a firm grip. “Come, Johnnie boy, we’ll dance,” he cried and pulled him about in a circle. John swayed from his hips like a coquettish girl. Myra observed for the first time that above his small and narrow foot in its low-cut patent-leather pumps, he was wearing open-work silk stockings.

Suddenly she loathed him. She loathed the fat man. She loathed Gisela because her face looked old and sick and worn out. She loathed Will because he spattered wine down Mara Luigi’s low-neck dress, and then ran his hand down her back on the pretext that he was drying her. She loathed Mara Luigi because she was pleased by the performance although she shrieked and kicked and struggled.

Myra felt a terrible longing for the peaceful solitude of her own room.

Giesbert was standing before her, asking her to dance with him. She pressed with both hands against his arms which were seeking to clasp her and carry her away.

“Please, don’t,” she said, impatient but pleading. “Don’t, don’t, please, I don’t like it!”

Suddenly, after she had released herself and was swaying a little dizzily, her glance came to rest on Eccarius’ face. He approached her with a gentle smile, and involuntarily she extended her hand to him. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she would have liked to say. “I want to go home!”

Then it occurred to her that she had no right to command him as she would a servant, when she had not given him a thought the whole evening.

But before she had found anything to say, he spoke himself. “You look tired, Miss Rudloff. I don’t want to hurry you, if you still wish to stay here. But if you would like to go, simply say so.”

Myra was heartily grateful to him, although she had again been almost shocked by his ugliness as he suddenly appeared before her.

She was not entirely satisfied with herself. It must be her own fault that she was always seeing ugly and pathetic things everywhere. Probably she was not strong enough for life, not healthy enough, not stupid, or perhaps not wise, enough.

Everywhere life had angles and edges, points and sharp corners. Wherever one groped among the rosy, shimmering clouds that so beautifully enveloped them, one was struck and hurt. One had to be a cobble-stone or a diamond not to be shattered by their hardness.

She walked after Eccarius in an almost stony silence. Let him think what he would of her! She was tired and upset, angry and dispirited. She had no desire to torment herself further with a laboredly indifferent conversation.

Eccarius allowed her time to cool her feverishly hot forehead in the night air. She gazed up at the bright flames of the stars and again, as always, felt the need to spread her folded wings, to launch herself at last, at last into the infinite; so impatient was she that her heart was depressed, her breathing labored, and there was an aching against her ribs.

Finally, after a long time, she heard a quiet voice beside her utter what seemed to be the last link in a long chain of thought.

“You will do me a great favor, Miss Rudloff, if you do not pass judgment upon your hostesses and their house because of this evening’s rather”—he hesitated—“rather turbulent festivities. You must sit out there in their garden with them some quiet afternoon and talk with both ladies. I am quite certain that you might gain much by it, and it would be a pity if tonight’s performance had spoiled your taste for it.”

Myra felt as if she had been looked through and through and was a little ashamed.

“Oh, of course not,” she said with some embarrassment. “I was really very charmed by both ladies. I am simply not accustomed to such noisy society. Ah, I am really not accustomed to sociability at all, and there were simply too many and too varied impressions for me. I am suffering a little from a _carrousel feeling_, if you can imagine what that is.”

“Oh, yes,” Eccarius laughed softly. “I imagine that it is mostly dizziness and nausea.”

“Not only,” said Myra, “but music too, music that keeps droning on, and a lot of gaiety and a lot of light, a mysterious and fascinating gaiety—pearl-bespangled, dazzling decorations behind which mysterious, alluring, weird things are concealed—the driving power, the machinery, the engine. And out of the darkness appear single brightly illuminated faces that keep vanishing and reappearing. But above all, above all is the impression of a longed-for pleasure that has been tasted till one is sick and tired of it.”

“That’s all right then.” Eccarius smiled as if his thoughts were already somewhere else. “You did not know that Nora is an invalid?” he inquired after a pause.

“No,” said Myra. Then, half involuntarily, as if driven by a sense of guilt for which she somehow hoped to atone, she said, “Oh, she made me feel so terribly bad!”

“She has had a very sad life,” said Eccarius, rather reluctantly, “but in spite of that, I would not say that she makes me feel bad. Somehow I wouldn’t dare say that. It would seem almost presumptuous of me. There is so much about the woman that compels one’s admiration, so much that is superior to us, so much that one can almost envy, that pity, in my opinion, hardly enters into the case.”

Myra felt that his remark was worded very discreetly in order that she might understand, though not too harshly or emphatically, that she had said something stupid. She was grateful to him for his considerateness, for it hurt her dreadfully to be corrected by anyone.

“At any rate, I will make every effort to know her better,” she said with a hearty determination. “I believe that there is much to be learned from her, and there is nothing I need more in this world than to learn.”

“It is already a great deal simply to know that,” said Eccarius with a smile. “Most young people of twenty think they know enough. If you always pick your instructresses with as sure an instinct, you can’t go far wrong.”

“I hope so.” Myra knitted her brows. Fear again cast its shadow on her like a cloud, fear of making a misstep, of becoming bewildered, of straying into treacherous morasses, of walking into an abyss—courting disaster in some form or other.

“In any case, I won’t have to suffer any long-drawn death,” she thought, “when my shattered limbs are lying at the bottom of the abyss. Then there will be nothing left for me but Olga’s bequest—my friend, the revolver!”

XII

For the third time during one of her walks, Myra suddenly found herself, on that corner in the suburbs, on which stood Sophie’s little house. But this time she did not turn quickly in the opposite direction. Instead, she walked down a street flooded with late autumn sunlight, quite bathed in whiteness except for the thin tremulous shadows cast by the delicate plumage of the young mountain-ashes.

Myra no longer remembered the number, but it would not be difficult to discover the house. It must be the third to the right. Yes, the garden-gate bore a rather striking name-plate, and above the arbor the little pennant was hanging limply in the motionless air.