Part 2

Olga was very tall and very slender. Her face was beautiful and boldly chiselled. Her smooth, rich, dark hair exposed much of her high and admirably modelled forehead. Her thin black brows drew together at the top of her nose, which gave her sharp, metallic-gray eyes an almost threatening expression. Her speech was crisp and hard. But her voice had a deep, soft, cello quality. It made a striking contrast.

There was something in her manner of dressing which pleased Myra without her being able to define it. One could not dispose of it with a word like “tasteful” or “elegant” or “smart.” Myra felt dimly—“That is how I should like to dress.”

Myra felt her throat go dry and her heart throb wildly when her turn came to read. She had never been so nervous in school no matter how unprepared she had come. Every word seemed a snare to her. She would mispronounce everything and make a fool of herself, irrevocably. It was really a crime to know so little French. She would go to her father tomorrow and ask him to let her take French lessons. He would be overjoyed to have her come to him with such a request.

She was relieved when she had stammered her few lines. Then came Erika’s turn, and then Fannie again, with all the pathos at her command.

When they were all standing again, putting on their hats in front of the mirror, Myra noticed with an inexplicable joy that she was almost as tall as Olga Radó, much taller than the three fair, plump misses.

In a trio they descended the stairs and walked part of the way together. Erika Hanneman did most of the talking.

From time to time, Olga Radó said, “Isn’t it?—No!—Indeed—Oh!—No?”

Myra was silent.

At last Erika Hanneman said good-bye and turned to the left.

Olga and Myra walked briskly side by side in silence for a while. Myra should long ago have turned off if she wanted to take the shortest way home. She observed with some concern that she kept right on going, but she was much too happy to stop now that Erika Hanneman had finally left them: the air seemed to have become purer and one could stride along more freely. It was a joy to keep up with this lovely, regular pace, and she comforted herself with the thought that nobody knew where she lived anyhow, and that she had just as much right on the street as anybody else.

Myra glanced at every house with a certain anxiety: was it at this one or the next that Olga Radó would stop with a hasty good-bye, and the heavy door close behind her, leaving the street barren and lonely?

But at last they had reached a house in front of which Olga Radó suddenly halted.

“My home,” she said, “if you can call a boarding-house home. But after all, what can you call home? Are you familiar with the Pension Flesch?”

“I don’t know any boarding-houses.”

“Lucky girl! You live with your parents?”

“With my father.”

“Oh, the house is quite nice. I have lived in worse. Drop in once in a while and have a look at my cubbyhole!”

“I’d love to.”

* * * * *

That “love to” was no mere manner of speaking. For the next few days and nights Myra pondered how she should contrive to accept this invitation and visit Olga Radó.

Once she actually started out. Then she returned because she thought it better to announce her call by telephone. But then again, it did not seem proper to disturb Olga by a telephone call. She would rather write. But that gave the matter such importance and formality, deprived it of all its chance, its accidental character. And then if she received a polite refusal, all possibility would be gone of making a further attempt. But if she simply went up and did not find Olga at home, she could leave her card with a few words—and wait for a reply.

She went, went as far as the house, but again she did not go in. She walked up and down the street and stood for a long time, lost in thought, in front of a few utterly uninviting shopwindows. It might well happen that Olga Radó would leave the house at this time, or better yet, might be returning home and would ask Myra to come in with her.

In addition, Myra cultivated her relations with the Moebius girls with a touching zeal. She invited them to her house as often as Aunt Emily permitted, she went to see them as often as she was asked. And she found occasion to phone them a hundred times in order to make various arrangements. She borrowed books that had to be fetched and returned, and withal made such lavish efforts to be amiable that the consul’s wife was quite charmed with her, and was never weary of impressing on Aunt Emily how much Myra was changing for the better. To which Aunt Emily commonly replied by a silent, all but offended shrug of her shoulders.

This went on for weeks. But Myra did not lose patience. It was enough for her to hear from time to time a remark let fall—“as Olga always says” or “Olga likes that so much.” It was enough, in fact almost too much, to hear Fannie say, “Olga was up for a moment last night, I thought she looked very bad!” Or to have Emmie, who at this time was conceiving something like a mild passion for Myra, observe, “Myra has such remarkably beautiful hands, almost as beautiful as Olga’s....”

Ah, it was even enough to hold the little black dog on her lap and laugh and call it “Sophonisba,” a pet name Olga had given it.

All this afforded hope and suspense for days. It was at this time, that Myra began to find life beautiful again.

She did not know why.

III

One evening—the girls were again sitting together in the twilight—because they could chat better that way than in the glaring lamp light, there came a shrill ring of the bell, and a few moments later those deep, vibrant tones that sent a thrill of terror into Myra’s very heart sounding from the next room.

She knew that voice perfectly, but she was afraid she might be mistaken. She wanted to ask, “Isn’t that Olga?” but was afraid of receiving the answer “No.” And more than all else, she was afraid that that conversation in the next room might stop, that the door might open, and she would hear too late, “Olga just dropped in for a moment.”

But the voices did not stop. They grew louder, drew nearer, the door was thrown wide open of a sudden, and in the frame stood the tall apparition of Olga Radó, in bold relief against the yellow light flooding the next room, like a silhouette on a golden background.

“Do you want to have tea with me tomorrow, children?” she called into the dark room. “Somebody has just sent me some Kugler’s confections.”

The Moebius girls shouted for joy.

Emmie pushed forward a chair and wanted Olga to sit down, but she declined and did not take her hand from the door-knob.

“No, no, children, I haven’t a moment’s time. But be there promptly tomorrow, at four, or half past at the latest, I have to go to the opera in the evening.”

Myra did not move. When the door opened she had uttered a semi-audible “Good evening.” Now it seemed obtrusive to call attention to herself. Perhaps, Olga had not even seen her in her dark corner. Perhaps, too, she did not want to see her. It would have been understandable. But something hurt her at the thought.

“Won’t you come, too, Miss Rudloff? If you have nothing better in the offing. You are heartily welcome.”

“I should love to,” said Myra, and went pale with pleasure.

* * * * *

Olga received her guests with what appeared to be cordial and genuine pleasure. It seemed inconceivable to Myra that this woman should not wrap herself in cold hauteur as in a coat of mail.

The girls could not restrain their amusement at the ingenious darkness.

“Yes,” said Olga, “I wanted to present my cubbyhole in the best light. And the best light is the least light possible.”

Myra was urged to sit in a deep easy-chair.

“Yes, you must make yourself at home with us. After all you are our guest of honor, you are the oldest! You are probably still proud of the fact, but when you are as old as I am, it ceases to be a compliment.”

In all her life Myra had never felt as much at home as in the easy-chair.

In front of her, Olga was crouched on a low taboret. The inevitable cigarette was already between her fingers and she clamped it in her teeth whenever she needed her hands free to pour tea or pass the cake.

When a lull occurred in the conversation, she brought out a box of photographs she had taken on various trips, or a book with Dulac illustrations, or a magazine with pictures of the latest screen stars.

Again Myra was conscious of a feeling of pain. It was all she could do to answer yes or no to the conversation. “She is making such a dreadful effort to entertain us,” she thought. “But in reality, we’re a bore and a burden to her. As soon as the door has closed behind us, she’ll draw a long breath and say, ‘Thank God!’ I can hardly blame her. But why did she ever invite us?”

She had the greatest desire to go, simply to free Olga Radó from this visitation. At the same time, she felt that if she tried to break away with some excuse or other, and they questioned her and pleaded with her, and all their attention was focussed on her, she would be unable to keep back the tears which were even now threatening and smarting.

She was almost glad, and yet deeply unhappy, when Olga suddenly glanced at her watch and said, “I’ll have to throw you out, children, sorry as it makes me. I have to dress quickly as possible—the time passed so dreadfully fast.”

* * * * *

Myra spent a whole week in aimless promenades, practised the piano at home and studied French, and when she had practised and studied for half an hour, would throw herself on the divan and stare at the scrap of blue sky netted with silvery telephone wires which she could see from where she lay. Then her thoughts would fly hither and yon—how glorious it would be to understand all the languages in the world, or to master some instrument perfectly, or to have a wonderful voice, or to be ravishingly beautiful. But since one never could attain to any of those things, perhaps it would be pleasantest to be dead.

Then there would come pressing duties which compelled her to go down Motz Street. And since one had to pass _the_ house, it was natural that one should walk a little slower, gaze up at the windows and peer down the street.

And since one was in town and wanted to go home, one might just as well go down Motz as Kleist Street. And since one went out to get a little fresh air, it was the most natural thing in the world that one should sit down on a bench on Victoria Louisa Square and watch the children playing.

Every day Myra stood in front of a shop-window containing gloves, ribbons and laces, and stared in profound thought at the display—because at the back was a mirror, and in this mirror she could watch the door of the house opposite.

Every time the door opened, Myra started.

Once when Olga Radó emerged from that door, Myra scarcely recognized her. Olga wore a loose cloak, both hands were thrust in her pockets and she had no hat. She ran, rather than walked, two houses farther down to the mail-box, and dropped a letter.

Myra hurried across the street to intercept her on her return. Her heart was throbbing so that she had to gasp for breath. With the extreme speed of thought she decided on a hundred different courses and instantly rejected them again. She would say something to Olga. She would pass her with a silent greeting. But suppose she were not recognized! She had better say something to her. But what?

While she was still crossing the street, Olga had seen her and waved her hand.

“Hello, Myra! Were you going to call on me?”

“Not exactly,” said Myra paling with excitement. Perhaps this was a further stupidity, perhaps she should have said yes.

“Yes, exactly.” Olga hooked her hand in Myra’s arm. “Come up for an hour. Or shall you be neglecting something? No? Well, then, fine! Wait, I must see my friend at the corner and buy me some cigarettes. Will you come, too?”

Never in all her life had Myra seen such a charming tobacco shop as this at the corner. Never had any individual pleased her so much at first sight as this white-haired, simpering little man, with the withered, trembling hands, from whom Olga Radó bought her cigarettes.

Olga sat at the broad diplomat’s desk of black stained oak, her legs crossed in a Luther chair, leaning somewhat forward, both elbows resting on the high arms.

Myra sat facing her in the easy-chair. She felt a little strained as at an examination. Something went tense deep within her, so that she gritted her teeth and said to herself, “I will pass this test, I will pass it.”

For a while all went well. They talked of the Moebius girls and of Erika Hanneman and Olga’s aunt, the consul’s wife. And Myra told about her life at home, about Aunt Emily and the beautiful days of her childhood.

Suddenly Olga said, “Tell me frankly, how do you come to be friends with my so-called cousins?”

“I don’t know,” said Myra, “Aunt Emily....”

“I don’t mean to say anything against them,” said Olga quickly, “they are as good as gold. But aren’t you bored to death in this perpetual round?”

“Yes,” Myra replied, “but I’m always bored, anyway.”

“Why, how dreadful!” said Olga really shocked. “I’d rather be dead than be bored. Don’t you really know anybody but Fannie and Emmie and Aunt Emily?”

“No,” Myra hesitated. “It’s probably my own fault. I’ve never had a friend. But then I’ve never wanted one.”

“It is not so easy,” Olga reflected. “Usually we miss our best friends by a century or two. We know some by reading about them or seeing their pictures. But that is all, of those who will be born after us, we know nothing. That is why I so envy people who create. They can greet those who come after us. They can keep themselves alive in pictures, words or deeds. Yes, in deeds, too. It is like a cry. Thus I am, thus I was, love me! And if in their own lifetimes they have never found anyone—perhaps in a hundred years, or maybe two hundred, somebody will be born who will love them as they desired to be loved. Who will understand them as they desired to be understood. We poor creatures—once we’re dead, we most certainly will never be loved again. Not for as long as ten years after, ah, not even for ten months. Sometimes I would like....”

Her eyes were very dark and menacing under her furrowed brows.

She broke off and began again in another one. “Do you know, there are a great many very congenial people of the Renaissance. We should have lived four or five centuries sooner. I should certainly have been friends with Margherita Sforza. I have just read a wonderful story about how she held her brother’s possessions when Julius Caesar was sent against them.”

Myra felt a tempest in her brain which was not unlike vertigo. Renaissance—that was a familiar idea. Her mind made some kind of hazy connection with the name Sforza.

But—“Julius Caesar,” she muttered to herself, disconcerted.

Olga laughed. “No, no, not the great one! Julius Caesar of Capua. Some stupid, little princeling or other. You don’t need to know him.”

“Ah,” Myra sighed with sincere feeling, “there’s so much that I don’t know, that I have to learn.”

“Oh, well, it won’t be so dreadful,” said Olga. “You know Queen Jeanne, don’t you?”

“Which one?” asked Myra quite at sea. “I know the Queen of Navarre’s stories....”

“But not herself, I trust,” said Olga in fun. “Besides, she was a Margueritte. But you don’t know the Sforza?” She asked it as tenderly, as encouragingly, as if she were talking to a child whom she did not wish to hurt.

“I don’t know ... no ... and yet....”

“Well, what _do_ you know about her?”

“Nothing,” said Myra disconcerted. “Only the picture by Rubens—the little girl with the liverwurst....”

Olga listened for a moment with her eyebrows lifted as if she were recollecting. Then she laughed loudly and merrily, more merrily than Myra had ever heard her laugh. But, strangely enough, her amusement did not wound Myra, although she was surprised at this failure on her part to be hurt. It was so nice, to see Olga Radó laugh so heartily. Even if one’s self was being laughed at.

“You poor child!” cried Olga still laughing. “What must your mind look like! Ah, I should like to introduce some order there for a change!”

“Do,” said Myra fervently. “Please, please, do!”

For a moment Olga’s face grew serious and thoughtful.

“No, no,” said Myra, immediately terrified, “that’s just impertinence on my part. After all, you’re not our governess!”

“Child!” said Olga, leaning forward suddenly and laying her hand on Myra’s. “Are you really so sensitive? But you have no reason to be. Do you want to learn to read with me? There is nothing more I can do for you. But come up and study, won’t you? Come up here to me as often as you wish until you are bored.”

“I never will be!” said Myra as if she were taking a sacred oath.

“But you know, before we can really dig into anything, you will have to make a general survey. First you’ll have to work your way through a history of the world. Shall I give you Schlosser? Here are eighteen volumes. One volume after the other. Yes, my child, Heaven won’t help you this time! If you can’t do more, at least you can read a round hundred pages a day, that’s all. And when you’re finished, every three or four days you’ll come up and exchange your book for another and we’ll have tea and chat a little. Like the idea? Shall we make it a go?”

That is the way it began.

And that is the way it went along for quite a while.

With passionate zeal Myra read the books that Olga Radó lent her. And when she had put down the book, her face ablaze, it would seem to her as if Olga sat in front of her, holding a long conversation with her. On every page there was something, something horrible or beautiful, something strange or incomprehensible, something which she must tell Olga or question her about.

And sometimes she really did have these conversations, sometimes she did say what she had it in mind to say, what she had resolved to tell Olga—but very seldom.

It was a peculiarly surprising and delightful fact, of which Myra was probably always conscious, but which was not clear to her until much, much later—one could not steer a conversation with Olga Radó.

So strong were her moods that they created an atmosphere in a room so that it was impossible to partake of any other feeling than hers. And whoever was not sensitive to this, whoever did invoke another mood than that with which wood and glass and air and silk seemed softly to vibrate, called forth a screaming dissonance.

Myra felt this sometimes, later on, when strangers entered the room. She herself never called forth, not even at the very beginning, the slightest discord, because she was quiet, because she effaced herself in order, half unconsciously, and yet almost anxiously, to intercept every vibration that quivered in the air.

It was half unconscious only at first, that is. She felt herself so abysmally small and stupid that she hardly dared have an idea of her own in Olga’s presence. Later, when her healthy nerves had been stretched fine and thin to the breaking-point, she mastered the art consciously. She used to say sometimes, in fun, “You must have gone down the street in a very bad humor today. The houses are still making faces at you behind your back!”

It was the third or fourth time that Myra had been up. Olga was lying on the divan, smoking so incessantly that the blue clouds had difficulty in escaping out the window.

Myra sat in her easy-chair, reading Jean Paul aloud to her. “Others, too, at least the reader and myself, would have been affected by this transparent night with which April was closing, the vast stillness on which the drum-taps beat, that longing for one’s beloved with which the morrow again restores a barren heart and a shattered life remove;—these things would have filled us both with a gentle tremulousness and dreams....”

“Please stop!” said Olga, pressing her hand to her temples. “Don’t be angry, but I can’t stand that today. Be a good girl, up there you’ll find Walt Whitman—on the top shelf—more to the right. But never mind, don’t bother. Go to my dressing-table, you’ll find a silver brush there. No, the one with the handle. Let me have it, will you?”

Obediently, Myra fetched the brush.

Olga took it from her without rising and beat a mighty tattoo against the wall with the back; after a short pause, a second and a third.

Myra laughed. “Must you have the brush for that?”

“Yes,” said Olga. “It’s my telegraph instrument. After long years of experience, proved the best. What else can I use? The ink-well is no good. A book makes no noise, and besides, I don’t like to treat it so....”

Meanwhile there came a knock on the door.

“Come in, come in, come in,” called Olga.

The door was partly opened and a man’s blond head peered in.

“Ah, a caller?” said a high, thin, husky, and yet not unpleasant, voice.

“Come in, Peterkin,” said Olga, “it’s only Myra.”

Her words sent a wonderful feeling of happiness through Myra. They gave her a certain justification, a sense of being at home in this room, where simply to be tolerated was a pride and joy.

The little man, who insinuated his delicate and deformed body through the door, knew her, was aware that it was she who was “just Myra”—that is to say, that she was not a mere caller, not a stranger, but somebody who belonged there, who would not be in the way. One was as good as alone.

All Myra’s sympathy darted out to the young man. Perhaps, if he had been a more commanding, more handsome youth, she would have experienced some feeling of jealousy toward him. But he was anything but handsome, in spite of his gentle blue eyes and his exquisitely manicured hands.

Myra loved him from the very first, in the same way she had loved the tobacconist at the corner, with an almost real affection.

This first meeting was the beginning of a faithful friendship that was to last for years.